''  'i:'^ 


^p  Eeto.  WusUMton  tSlaUaen,  £).  £). 


THE    CHURCH    AND    MODERN    LIFE.       i2mo,Ji.2S, 

nei.     Postage  extra. 
WHERE  DOES  THE  SKY  BEGIN?     i2mo,  J1.35,  wf^. 

Postpaid,  5i-37. 
WITNESSES  OF  THE  LIGHT:  Being  the  William  Bel- 
den  Noble  Lectures  for  1903.    Illustrated.    i2ino,$i.2S, 

net.    Postpaidj  J1.36. 
SOCIAL    SALVATION.     i6mo,    $1.00,   nei.     Postpaid, 

$1.10. 
THE  LORD'S  PRAYER.     i6mo,  if  i.oo. 
APPLIED   CHRISTIANITY.     Moral  Aspetts  of  Social 

Questions.     i6mo,  $1.25. 
TOOLS  AND  THE  MAN.     Property  and  Industry  under 

the  Christian  Law.     i6mo,  $1.25. 
RULING    IDEAS   OF   THE    PRESENT    AGE.      i6mo, 

$1.25. 
WHO  WROTE  THE  BIBLE?    A  Book  for  the  People. 

i6mo,  Si. 25. 
SEVEN  PUZZLING  BIBLE  BOOKS.    A  Supplement  to 

"  Who  Wrote  the  Bible  ? "     i6mo,  $1.25. 
HOW  MUCH  IS  LEFT  OF  THE  OLD  DOCTRINES? 

i6mo,  $1.25. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  COMPANY, 
Boston  and  New  York. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 


THE    CHURCH   AND 
MODERN   LIFE 


BY 


WASHINGTON  GLADDEN 


BOSTON   AND   NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPAl^ 

1908 


COPYRIGHT   1908   BY  WASHINGTON   GLADDEN 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Published  March  IQO& 


PREFACE 

"  The  time  is  come,"  said  a  New  Testament 
prophet,  "for  judgment  to  begin  at  the  house 
of  God."  Perhaps  that  time  ought  never  to 
pass,  but  if,  in  any  measure,  the  criticism  of 
the  church  has  of  late  been  suspended,  it 
is  certainly  reopened  now,  in  good  earnest. 
Nor  is  this  criticism  confined  to  outsiders ;  the 
church  is  forced  to  listen  in  these  days  to 
caustic  censures  from  those  who  speak  from 
within  the  fold. 

That  such  self-criticism  is  needed  these  chap- 
ters will  not  deny.  That  the  church  is  passing 
through  a  critical  period  must  be  conceded. 
But  the  way  of  life  is  not  obscure,  and  it 
seems  almost  absurd  to  indulge  the  fear  that 
the  church,  which  has  been  providentially 
guided  through  so  many  centuries,  will  fail  to 
find  it. 

These  pages  have  been  written  in  the  firm 
belief  that  the  Christian  church  has  its  great 
work  still  before  it,  and  that  it  only  needs  to 
free  itself  from  its  entanglements  and  gird 
itself  for  its  testimony  to  become  the  light  of 


vi  PREFACE 

the  world.  Something  of  what  it  needs  to  do 
to  make  ready  for  this  great  future,  this  little 
book  tries  to  show. 

Through  all  this  study  the  thought  has  con- 
stantly returned  to  the  young  men  and  women 
to  whom  the  future  of  the  church  is  com- 
mitted; and  while  the  book  is  most  likely 
first  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  their  pastors  and 
teachers,  the  author  hopes  that  ways  will  be 
found  of  conveying  its  message  to  those  by 
whom,  in  the  end,  its  truth  will  be  made  ef- 
fective. 

W.  G. 

First  Congregational  Church, 
Columbus,  Ohio,  December  17,  1907. 


CONTENTS 

I.  The  Roots  of  Religion         ....      1 
II.  OcR  Religion  and  Other  Religions        .        30 

III.  The  Social  Side  of  Religion       .        .        .55 

IV.  The  Business  of  the  Church  ...        76 
V.  Is  THE  Church  Decadent?  ....  100 

VI.  The  Coming  Reformation  ....      126 

VII.  SOCLA.L  Redemption 148 

VIII.  The  New  Evangelism         ....      173 
IX.  The  New  Leadership 199 


THE 
CHURCH   AND   MODERN   LIFE 

I 

THE    ROOTS    OF    RELIGION 

The  church  with  which  we  are  to  deal  in  the 
pages  which  follow  is  the  Christian  church  in 
the  United  States,  comprising  the  entire  body 
of  Christian  disciples  who  are  organized  into 
religious  societies,  and  are  engaged  in  Christ- 
ian work  and  worship. 

This  church  is  not  all  included  in  one  or- 
ganization ;  it  is  made  up  of  many  different 
sects  and  denominations,  some  of  which  have 
very  little  fellowship  with  the  rest.  Among 
these  groups  are  some  who  claim  that  their 
particular  organizations  are  the  true  and  only 
churches;  that  the  others  have  no  right  to 
the  name.  Such  is  the  claim  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  church  and  of  the  High  Church  Epis- 
copalians. Their  use  of  the  word  church 
would  confine  it  to  those  of  their  own  com- 
munions. Others  would  apply  the  term  more 
broadly  to  all  who  profess  and  call  themselves 


2   THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

Christians,  and  who  are  united  in  promoting 
the  teachings  and  principles  of  the  Christian 
rehgion. 

The  church,  as  thus  defined,  has  no  uniform 
and  authoritative  creed,  and  no  ruHng  officers 
or  assemblies  who  have  a  right  to  speak  for  it ; 
it  is  difficult,  therefore,  to  make  any  definite 
statements  about  it.  It  is  possible,  neverthe- 
less, to  think  of  all  these  variously  organized 
groups  of  people  as  belonging  to  one  body. 
In  some  very  important  matters  they  are 
united.  They  all  believe  in  one  God,  the 
Father  Almighty ;  they  all  bear  the  name  of 
Christ ;  they  all  acknowledge  him  as  Lord 
and  Leader  ;  they  all  accept  the  Bible  as  con- 
taining the  truth  which  they  profess  to  teach. 
The  things  in  which  they  agree  are,  indeed, 
far  more  important  than  the  things  in  which 
they  differ,  and  it  is  our  custom  often  to  speak 
of  this  entire  body  of  Christian  disciples  as 
"  the  church,"  forgetting  their  differences  and 
emphasizing  their  essential  unity.  This  is  the 
meaning  which  will  be  given  to  *^the  church  " 
in  these  discussions. 

The  church  is  concerned  with  religion.  As 
the  interest  of  the  state  is  politics,  of  the  bank 
finance,  of  the  school  education,  so  the  interest 


THE  ROOTS  OF  RELIGION  3 

of  the  church  is  religion.  Religion  organizes 
the  church,  and  the  church  promotes  religion. 

Religion  is  a  fact  of  the  first  magnitude. 
We  sometimes  hear  ministers  complaining  that 
the  people  do  not  give  it  so  much  attention 
as  they  ought,  but  we  shall  find  it  true  in  all 
countries  and  in  all  the  centuries  that  it  is  one 
of  the  main  interests  of  human  life.  There  are 
few  subjects,  probably  there  is  no  other  sub- 
ject, to  which  the  human  race  has  given  so 
much  thought  as  to  the  subject  of  religion. 
The  greatest  buildings  which  have  been  erected 
on  this  planet  were  for  the  service  of  religion ; 
more  books  have  been  written  about  it  than 
about  any  other  theme ;  a  large  part  of  the 
world's  art  has  had  a  religious  impulse ;  many, 
alas !  of  the  most  destructive  wars  of  history 
have  been  prompted  by  it ;  it  has  laid  the 
foundations  of  great  nations,  our  own  among 
them,  and  has  given  form  and  direction  to 
every  great  civilization  under  the  sun. 

It  is  not  a  churchman,  or  a  theologian,  it 
is  Mr.  John  Fiske,  one  of  the  foremost  scien- 
tific investisrators,  who  has  said  of  reliofion  : 
"None  can  deny  that  it  is  the  largest  and 
most  ubiquitous  fact  connected  with  the  exist- 
ence of  mankind  upon  the  earth."  ^ 

«   Through  Nature  to  God.  p.  189. 


4   THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

About  the  size  of  the  fact  there  is  no  dis- 
puting, but  how  shall  we  explain  it?  Where 
did  it  come  from  ? 

The  scientific  people  have  puzzled  their 
heads  not  a  little  over  the  question  where  the 
life  on  this  planet  came  from.  They  cannot 
make  up  their  minds  to  say  that  it  came  from 
non-living  matter;  and  some  of  them  have 
ventured  a  guess  that  the  first  germs  might 
have  been  brought  by  a  meteorite  from  some 
distant  planet.  That,  however,  only  pushes 
the  mystery  one  step  further  back  :  how  did  it 
come  to  be  on  that  distant  planet  ? 

The  origin  of  religion  has  furnished  a  sim- 
ilar puzzle  to  these  investigators.  There  are 
those  among  them  who  assume  that  religion 
is  an  invention  of  crafty  men  who  find  it  a 
means  of  obtaining  ascendency  over  their 
fellows.  That  it  is  all  imposture  —  the  pro- 
duct of  priestcraft  —  is  the  theory  of  some 
small  philosophers.  Such  being  the  case,  they 
expect  that  the  progress  of  knowledge  will 
cause  it  to  disappear. 

To  others  it  seems  probable  that  religious 
ideas  may  have  originated  in  the  phenomena  of 
dreams.  In  the  visions  of  the  night  those  who 
have  passed  out  of  life  reappear ;  this  gives 


THE   ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  5 

room  for  the  belief  that  they  are  still  in  exist- 
ence, and  suggests  that  there  may  be  another 
world  whose  inhabitants  exert  an  important 
influence  over  the  affairs  of  this  world.  Ac- 
cording to  this  ghost  theory,  religion  is  all  an 
illusion. 

Such  crude  explanations  are,  however,  not 
much  credited  in  these  days  by  thoughtful 
men.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  foundations 
of  religion  are  deeply  laid  in  human  nature. 
Aristotle  told  a  great  truth,  many  centuries 
ago,  when  he  said  that  man  is  a  political 
animal.  That  is  to  say,  there  is  a  political  in- 
stinct in  him  which  causes  him  to  organize 
political  societies  and  make  laws ;  he  is  a  state 
builder  in  the  same  way  that  the  beaver  is  a 
dam  builder,  or  the  oriole  is  a  nest  builder,  or 
the  bee  is  a  comb  builder. 

With  equal  truth  we  may  say  that  man  is  a 
religious  animal.  The  impulse  that  causes  him 
to  worship,  to  trust,  to  pray,  is  as  much  a  part 
of  his  constitution  as  is  the  homing  instinct  of 
the  pigeon.  This  natural  instinct  is,  however, 
reinforced  by  the  operation  of  his  reason. 
Feeling  is  deeper  than  thought;  we  are  moved 
by  many  impulses  before  we  frame  any  theo- 
ries. But  the  normal  human  beinc:  sooner  or 


6   THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

later  begins  to  try  to  explain  things ;  his 
reason  begins  to  work  upon  the  objects  that 
he  sees  and  the  feelings  that  he  experiences. 
And  it  is  not  long  before  something  like  what 
Charbonnel  describes  must  take  place  in  every 
human  soul :  — 

"  Every  man  has  within  him  a  sense  of  utter 
dependence.  His  mind  is  irresistibly  preoc- 
cupied by  the  idea  of  a  Power,  lost  in  the  im- 
mensity of  time  and  space,  which,  from  the 
depths  of  some  dark  mystery,  governs  the 
world.  This  power,  at  first,  seems  to  him  to 
manifest  itself  in  the  phenomena  of  nature, 
whose  grandeur  surpasses  the  power  or  even 
the  comprehension  of  mankind."  ^ 

Toward  this  unknown  power,  or  powers,  his 
thought  reaches  out,  and  he  begins  to  try  to 
explain  it  or  them.  He  forms  all  kinds  of 
crude  and  fantastic  theories  about  these  invis- 
ible forces.  At  first  he  is  apt  to  think  that 
there  are  a  great  many  of  them ;  it  is  long  be- 
fore he  clearly  understands  that  there  can  be 
but  One  Supreme.  The  moral  quality  of  the 
being  or  beings  whom  he  thus  conceives  is  not 
clearly  discerned  by  him ;  he  is  apt  to  think 
them   fickle,  jealous,  revengeful,  and  cruel; 

'  The  Victory  of  the  Will,  p.  213. 


THE  ROOTS   OF  RELIGION  7 

most  often  he  ascribes  to  them  his  own  frail- 
ties and  passions. 

In  some  such  way  as  this,  then,  religion 
begins.  It  is  the  response  of  the  human  nature 
to  impressions  made  upon  the  mind  and  heart 
of  man  by  the  universe  in  which  he  lives. 
These  impressions  are  not  illusions,  they  are 
realities.  All  men  experience  them.  Something 
is  here  in  the  world  about  us  which  appeals  to 
our  feelings  and  awakens  our  intellects.  Being 
made  as  we  are,  we  cannot  escape  this  influ- 
ence. It  awes  us,  it  fills  us  with  wonder  and 
fear  and  desire. 

Then  we  try  to  explain  it  to  ourselves,  and 
in  the  beginning  we  frame  a  great  many  very 
imperfect  explanations.  Sometimes  we  imagine 
that  this  power  is  located  in  some  tree  or  rock 
or  river ;  sometimes  it  is  an  animal ;  sometimes 
it  is  supposed  to  exist  in  invisible  spirits  or 
demons ;  sometimes  the  sky  or  the  ocean  repre- 
sents it,  or  one  of  the  elements,  like  fire,  is 
conceived  to  be  its  manifestation ;  sometimes 
the  greater  planets  are  the  objects  of  rever- 
ence ;  sometimes  imaginary  deities  are  con- 
ceived and  images  of  wood  or  stone  are  carved 
by  which  their  attributes  are  symbolized. 

These  religious  conceptions  of  the  primitive 


8   THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

races  seem  to  us,  now,  as  we  look  back  upon 
tliem  from  tlie  larger  light  of  the  present  day, 
to  be  grotesque  and  unworthy ;  we  wonder  that 
men  could  ever  have  entertained  such  notions 
of  deity,  and  we  are  sometimes  inclined,  be- 
cause of  these  crudities,  to  dismiss  the  whole 
subject  of  religion  as  but  a  farrago  of  super- 
stitions. But  these  imperfect  conceptions  do 
not  discredit  religion ;  they  are  rather  witnesses 
to  its  reality.  You  might  as  well  say  that  the 
speculations  and  experiments  of  the  old  al- 
chemists prove  that  there  is  no  truth  in  chem- 
istry; or  that  the  guesses  of  the  astrologers 
throw  doubt  on  the  science  of  astronomy.  The 
alchemists  and  the  astrologers  were  searching 
blindly  for  truth  which  they  did  not  find,  but 
the  truth  was  there ;  the  fetish  worshipers  and 
the  magicians  and  the  idolaters  were  also,  as 
Paul  said,  seeking  after  the  unknown  God. 
But  they  were  not  mistaken  in  the  principal 
object  of  their  search;  what  they  sought  was 
there,  and  the  pathetic  story  of  the  long  quest 
for  God  is  a  proof  of  the  truth  of  Paul's  say- 
ing, that  God  has  made  men  and  placed  them 
in  the  world  "that  they  should  seek  God,  if 
haply  they  might  feel  after  him  and  find  him, 
though  he  is  not  far  from  each  one  of  us."  It 


THE   ROOTS  OF  RELIGION  9 

was  not  a  delusion,  it  was  a  tremendous  reality 
that  they  were  dealing  with.  The  fact  that 
they  but  dimly  conceived  it  does  not  lessen 
the  greatness  of  tlie  reality. 

Not  many  intelligent  thinkers  in  these  days 
doubt  the  reality  and  the  permanence  of  re- 
ligion. Herbert  Spencer  did  not  profess  to  be 
a  Christian  believer;  by  many  persons  he  was 
supposed  to  be  an  enemy  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion ;  yet  no  man  has  more  strongly  asserted 
the  permanency  and  indestructibility  of  re- 
ligion. As  to  the  notion  that  religions  are  the 
product  of  human  craft  and  selfishness,  he 
says:  "A  candid  examination  of  the  evidence 
quite  negatives  the  doctrine  maintained  by 
some  that  creeds  are  priestly  inventions."^ 
And  again  :  "  An  unbiased  consideration  of 
its  general  aspects  forces  us  to  conclude  that 
rehgion,  everywhere  present  as  a  weft  running 
through  the  warp  of  human  history,  expresses 
some  eternal  fact."  -  And  ag^ain :  "  In  Relig-ion 
let  us  recojjnize  the  hiw'h  merit  that  from  the 
beginning  it  has  dimly  discerned  the  ultimate 
verity  and  has  never  ceased  to  insist  upon  it. 
.  .  .  For  its  essentially  valid  belief.  Religion 
has  constantly  done  battle.  Gross  as  were  the 

'  First  Principles,  p.  14.  2  /i,^/.  p.  20. 


10  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

disguises  under  which  it  at  first  espoused  this 
belief,  and  cherishing  this  behef,  though  it 
still  is,  under  disfiguring  vestments,  it  has 
never  ceased  to  maintain  and  defend  it.  It  has 
everywhere  established  and  propagated  one  or 
other  modification  of  the  doctrine  that  all 
things  are  manifestations  of  a  power  that  tran- 
scends our  knowledge."  ^ 

That  religion  is,  in  John  Fiske's  strong 
phrase,  an  "everlasting  reality"  is  a  fact 
which  few  respectable  thinkers  in  these  days 
would  venture  to  call  in  question.  But,  as  we 
have  seen,  this  reality  takes  upon  itself  a 
great  variety  of  forms.  Looking  over  the 
world  to-day,  we  discover  many  kinds  of  re- 
ligion. Religious  ideas,  religious  rites  and 
ceremonies,  religious  customs  and  practices,  as 
we  gather  them  up  and  compare  them,  consti- 
tute a  variegated  collection. 

Professor  William  James  has  a  thick  volume 
entitled  "  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experi- 
ence," in  which  he  brings  together  a  vast 
array  of  the  documents  which  describe  the 
religious  feelings  and  impulses  of  persons  in 
all  lands  and  all  ages.  It  is  not  a  study  of 
creeds  or  philosophies  of  religion,  it  is  a  study 

1  First  Principles,  pp.  99,  100. 


THE   ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  11 

of  personal  religious  experiences ;  of  the  fears, 
hopes,  desires,  contritions,  joys,  and  aspira- 
tions of  men  and  women  of  all  lands  and  ages, 
as  they  have  been  dealing  with  the  fact  of 
religion. 

Not  only  do  we  find  many  different  kinds 
of  religion  existing  side  by  side  upon  this 
planet;  we  also  find  that  each  of  these  types 
has  been  undero^oincj  constant  chanjjes  in  the 
course  of  the  centuries.  To  trace  the  religious 
development  of  any  people  from  the  earliest 
period  to  the  present  day  is  a  most  instructive 
study. 

Take  our  own  religion.  Christianity  is  not 
an  independent  form  of  faith.  Its  roots  run 
down  into  the  Hebrew  religion,  whose  record 
is  in  the  Old  Testament;  and  the  Hebrew  re- 
ligion grew  out  of  the  old  Semitic  faiths,  and 
these  again  sprang  from  the  ancient  Baby- 
lonian religfions  or  jjrew  along^side  of  them.  So 
we  are  compelled  to  go  far  back  for  the  origin 
of  many  of  our  own  religious  ideas.  Jesus  did 
not  claim  to  be  the  Founder  of  a  new  religion ; 
he  claimed  only  to  bring  a  better  interpretation 
of  the  religion  of  his  people.  He  said  that  he 
came  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfill  the  law  and 
the  prophets.  The  New  Testament  religion  is 


12  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

a  development  of  the  Old  Testament  religion. 
It  is  a  wonderful  growth.  When  we  go  back 
to  the  old  monuments  and  the  old  documents 
and  trace  the  progress  of  religious  beliefs  and 
practices  from  the  earliest  days  to  our  own,  w^e 
learn  many  things  which  are  well  worth  know- 
ing. 

The  central  fact  of  religious  progress  is  im- 
provement in  the  conception  of  the  character 
of  God.  As  the  ages  go  by,  men  gradually 
come  to  think  better  thoug-hts  about  God. 
Little  by  little  the  old  crude  and  savage  notions 
of  deity  drop  out  of  their  minds,  and  they  learn 
to  think  of  him  as  just  and  faithful  and  kind. 

The  Bible  shows  us  many  signs  of  this 
progress.  The  earlier  stories  about  God  give 
him  a  far  different  character  from  that  which 
appears  in  the  later  prophets.  It  was  beHeved 
by  the  earlier  Hebrews  that  God  desired  to 
have  them  put  to  death  all  the  inhabitants  of 
the  land  of  Canaan  when  they  took  possession 
of  it;  and  when  they  put  to  the  sword  not 
only  the  armed  men  of  the  land,  but  the  wo- 
men and  the  little  children,  they  supposed  that 
they  were  obeying  the  command  of  God.  They 
learned  better  than  that,  after  a  while. 

When    Abraham    started    with    Isaac   for 


THE    ROOTS  OF   RELIGION  13 

Mount  Moriah,  he  undoubtedly  thought  that 
he  should  please  God  by  putting  to  death  his 
own  well-beloved  son  ;  but  before  he  had  done 
the  dreadful  deed  the  revelation  came  to  hira 
that  that  was  a  terrible  mistake ;  he  saw  that 
God  was  not  pleased  by  human  sacrifices. 
That  was  a  great  day  in  the  history  of  religion. 
Because  of  that  experience,  Abraham  was  able 
to  make  his  descendants  believe  the  truth  that 
had  been  given  to  him,  and  from  that  time  on- 
ward human  sacrifices  probably  ceased  among 
the  Hebrews.  A  long  step  had  been  taken 
toward  the  purification  of  the  idea  of  God  of 
one  of  its  most  degrading  elements. 

This  superstition  lingered  long  in  other 
faiths ;  probably  it  survived  among  our  own 
ancestors  after  Abraham's  day.  Tennyson's 
poem,  "  The  Victim,"  is  a  vivid  picture  of  hu- 
man sacrifice  among  the  Teutonic  peoples  :  — 

"  A  plague  upon  the  people  fell, 
A  famine  after  laid  them  low; 
Then  thorpe  and  byre  arose  in  fire, 

For  on  them  brake  the  sudden  foe; 
So  thick  they  died  the  people  cried, 

'  The  Gods  are  moved  against  the  laud.' 

The  priest  in  horror  about  his  altar 

To  Thor  and  Odin  lifted  a  hand: 

'  Help  us  from  famine 

And  plague  and  strife  ! 


14  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

What  would  you  have  of  us  ? 
Human  life  ? 
Were  it  our  nearest, 
Were  it  our  dearest,  — 
Answer,  O  answer  !  — 
We  give  you  his  life.' " 

The  Gods  seemed  to  say  that  the  victim 
must  be  either  the  king's  wife  or  the  king's 
child;  -which  it  should  be,  was  the  terrible 
question  that  the  king  had  to  answer.  The 
choice  seemed  to  have  fallen  on  the  child,  but 
the  wife  would  not  have  it  that  he  was  the 
king's  dearest,  and  she  rushed  to  her  own 
immolation.  The  poem  reflects  the  common 
notion  of  those  dark  days,  that  the  angry 
Gods  could  only  be  propitiated  by  the  slaugh- 
ter of  those  whom  men  loved  the  best.  From 
this  horrible  idea  the  Jewish  people  were 
delivered  by  the  insight  of  their  great  ances- 
tor. 

Dark  notions  about  God  still  lingered  among 
them,  however,  and  the  Old  Testament  record 
shows  us  how  they  slowly  disappeared.  Moses 
and  Samuel  were  good  men  for  their  time,  but 
the  God  whom  they  worshiped  was  a  very  dif- 
ferent being  from  the  God  of  Hosea  or  of  the 
later  Isaiah. 

This  development  of  the  idea  of  God  has 


THE  ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  15 

been  going  on  in  modern  times.  It  is  not 
long  since  devont  men  were  in  the  habit  of 
saying  that  God's  displeasure  with  the  wicked- 
ness of  cities  was  exhibited  in  the  scourges  of 
cholera  and  scarlet  fever  in  which  multitudes 
of  little  children  were  the  victims.  Not  two 
hundred  years  ago  the  great  majority  of  our 
Pui-itan  ancestors  were  believing  in  a  God 
who,  for  the  sin  of  Adam,  was  sending  mil- 
lions of  infants,  every  year,  to  the  regions  of 
darkness  and  despair.  The  God  of  Cotton 
Mather  or  of  Edward  Payson  could  hardly 
have  lived  in  the  same  heaven  with  the  God 
of  Dwight  Moody  or  PhilHps  Brooks. 

The  changes  which  have  been  taking  place 
in  our  ideas  about  God  have  been  mainly  in  the 
direction  of  a  purified  ethical  conception  of 
his  character.  We  have  been  learning  to  be- 
lieve, more  and  more,  in  the  justice,  the  right- 
eousness, the  goodness  of  God.  In  the  oldest 
times  men  thought  him  cruel  and  revengeful; 
then  they  began  to  regard  him  as  willful  and 
arbitrary  —  his  justice  was  his  determination 
to  have  his  own  way ;  his  sovereignty  was  his 
egoistic  purpose  to  do  everything  for  his  own 
glory.  We  have  gradually  grown  away  from 
all  that,  and  are  able  now  to  believe  what  Abra- 


16  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

ham  believed,  that  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth 
will  do  right. 

In  the  presence  of  a  God  who,  I  am  assured, 
is  a  being  of  perfect  righteousness,  who  never 
blames  any  one  for  what  he  cannot  help,  who 
never  expects  of  any  one  more  than  he  has  the 
power  to  render,  who  means  that  I  shall 
know  that  his  treatment  of  me  is  in  perfect 
accord  with  my  own  deepest  intuition  of  truth 
and  fairness  and  honor,  I  can  stand  up  and  be 
a  man.  My  faith  will  not  be  the  cringing  sub- 
mission of  a  slave  to  an  absolute  despot,  but 
the  willing  and  joyful  acceptance  by  a  free 
man  of  righteous  authority. 

Now  it  is  certain  that  the  belief  of  the 
Christian  church  respecting  the  character  of 
God  has  been  steadily  changing,  in  this  direc- 
tion, through  the  Christian  centuries.  Enlight- 
ened Christians  have  been  coming  to  believe, 
more  and  more,  in  a  good  God ;  and  by  a 
good  God  I  mean  not  merely  a  good-natured 
God,  but  a  just  God,  a  true  God,  a  fair  God,  a 
righteous  God.  The  growth  of  this  conviction 
has  been  purging  theology  of  many  crude  and 
L    revoltino;  dosrmas. 

It  is  a  great  deliverance  which  is  wrought 
out  for  us  when  we  are  set  free,  in  our  religious 


THE   ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  17 

thinking,  from  the  bondage  of  unmoral  con- 
ceptions, and  are  encouraged  to  beheve  that 
God  is  good.  It  is  a  great  blessing  to  have  a 
God  to  worship  whom  we  can  thoroughly  re- 
spect. A  tremendous  strain  is  put  upon  the 
moral  nature  when  men  are  required,  by  tradi- 
tional influences,  to  pay  adoration  and  homage 
to  a  being  whose  conduct,  as  it  is  represented 
to  them,  is,  in  some  important  respects,  con- 
duct which  they  cannot  approve.  All  the  re- 
ligions, through  the  imperfection  of  human 
thought,  have  put  that  burden  on  their  wor- 
shipers. 

Christianity  has  been  struggling,  through 
all  the  centuries,  to  free  itself  from  unworthy 
conceptions  of  the  character  of  its  Deity,  and 
each  succeeding  re-statement  of  its  doctrines 
removes  some  stain  which  our  dim  vision  and 
halting  logic  had  left  upon  his  name. 

What,  now,  has  caused  these  changes  to 
take  place  in  men's  thoughts  about  God? 
What  influences  have  been  at  work  to  clarify 
their  ideas  of  the  unknown  Reality  ? 

From  three  principal  sources  have  come  the 
streams  of  hght  by  which  our  religious  con- 
ceptions have  been  purified. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  natural  world  round 


18  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

about  us.  We  are  immersed  in  Nature ;  it 
touches  us  on  every  side;  it  addresses  us 
through  all  our  senses ;  it  speaks  to  us  every- 
day with  a  thousand  voices.  Nature  is  the 
great  teacher  of  the  human  race.  She  knows 
everything ;  she  waits  to  impart  her  love  to  all 
who  will  receive  it;  she  is  very  patient;  her 
lessons  are  not  forced  upon  unwilling  pupils, 
but  whosoever  will  may  come  and  take  of  her 
treasure.  Longfellow  said  of  the  childhood  of 
Agassiz,  that  — 

"  Nature,  the  old  nurse,  took 
The  child  upon  her  knee, 
Saying  :  '  Here  is  a  story-book 
Thy  Father  has  written  for  thee. 

"  '  Come,  wander  with  me,'  she  said, 
*  Into  regions  yet  untrod; 
And  read  what  is  still  unread 
In  the  manuscripts  of  God.'  " 

It  is  not  the  child  Agassiz  alone  whom  Na- 
ture thus  invited ;  to  the  whole  human  race, 
in  its  childhood,  its  adolescence,  its  maturity, 
she  has  always  been  saying  the  same  thing. 
She  has  been  seeking,  through  all  the  ages,  to 
disclose  to  us  all  the  mysteries  of  this  mar- 
velous universe.  We  have  been  slow  learners ; 
it  took  her  a  great  many  centuries  to  get  the 
simplest  truths  lodged  in  the  human  mind. 


THE  ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  19 

The  cave-dweller,  the  savage  in  his  teepee, 
were  able  to  receive  but  little  of  what  she  had 
to  give.  Yet  before  their  eyes,  every  day,  she 
spread  all  her  wonders;  with  infinite  patience 
she  waited  for  the  unfolding  of  their  powers. 
All  the  marvels  of  steam,  of  electricity,  of  the 
camera,  of  the  telescope,  the  microscope,  the 
spectroscope,  the  Roentgen  rays,  —  all  the 
facts  and  forces  with  which  science  deals  were 
there,  in  the  hand  of  Mother  Nature,  waiting 
to  be  imparted  to  her  child  from  the  day  when 
he  first  stood  upright  and  faced  the  stars. 

Slowly  he  has  been  led  on  into  a  larger  un- 
derstanding of  this  wonderful  universe.  And 
what  has  he  learned  under  this  tuition?  What 
are  some  of  the  great  truths  which  have  grad- 
ually impressed  themselves  upon  his  mind  ? 

He  has  been  made  sure,  for  one  thing,  that 
this  is  a  universe ;  that  all  its  forces  are  cohe- 
rent ;  that  the  same  laws  are  in  operation  in 
every  part  of  it.  The  principles  of  mathematics 
are  everywhere  applicable  ;  gravitation  con- 
trols all  the  worlds  and  every  particle  of  mat- 
ter in  every  one  of  them,  and  the  spectroscope 
assures  us  that  the  same  chemical  elements 
which  constitute  our  world  are  found  in  the 
farthest  star.  "  On  every  hand,"  says  Walker, 


20  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

"  we  are  assured  that  the  guiding  principle  of 
Science  is  that  of  the  uniformity  of  nature." 

It  has  also  come  to  be  understood  that  na- 
ture is  all  intelligible.  Everything  can  be  ex- 
plained. This  is  the  fundamental  assumption 
of  science.  Many  things  have  not  yet  been 
explained,  but  there  is  an  explanation  for 
everything ;  of  that  every  thinker  feels  per- 
fectly sure.  "  Fifty  years  ago,"  says  Sir  John 
Lubbock,  "the  Book  of  Nature  was  like  some 
richly  illuminated  missal,  written  in  an  un- 
known tongue  ;  of  the  true  meaning  little 
was  known  to  us  ;  indeed  we  scarcely  realized 
that  there  was  a  meaning  to  decipher.  Now 
glimpses  of  the  truth  are  gradually  revealing 
themselves ;  we  perceive  that  there  is  a  reason 
—  and  in  many  cases  we  know  what  that  rea- 
son is  —  for  every  difference  in  form,  in  size, 
and  in  color,  for  every  bone  and  feather, 
almost  for  every  hair."  ^ 

This  is  the  latest  word  of  the  latest  philo- 
sophy ;  there  is  a  reason  for  everything.  As 
Romanes  says.  Nature  is  instinct  with  reason  ; 
"  tap  her  where  you  will,  reason  oozes  out  at 
every  pore." 

If  all  things  are  rational  and  intelHgible, 

'  Quoted  by  Walker  in  Christian  Theism,  p.  47. 


THE   ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  21 

then  all  things  must  be  the  product  of  a  ra- 
tional Intelligence.  That  conclusion  seems  in- 
evitable. 

But  we  can  go  further  than  this.  It  is  not 
merely  true  that  we  can  find  in  the  world 
about  us  the  signs  of  an  Intelligence  like  our 
own,  it  is  also  true  that  our  own  intelligence 
has  been  developed  by  the  revelation  to  us  of 
this  Intelligence  in  the  world  about  us.  "  If," 
says  Walker,  "human  reason  is  but  *the  reflec- 
tion in  us  of  the  universe  outside  of  us,'  then, 
clearly,  the  Reason  was  there,  expressed  in  the 
universe,  before  it  possibly  could  be  reflected 
in  us.  It  is  our  relation  to  the  Universe  that 
makes  us  ratioiial"  And  again,  "  Apart  from 
the  Reason  expressed  in  the  Universe  around 
him,  man  could  never  have  become  the  rational 
being  that  he  is."' 

This,  then,  is  the  first  great  reason  why  our 
religion  has  gradually  become  more  rational. 
The  rationality  of  the  universe  constantly  pre- 
sented to  our  thought  has  developed  a  ration- 
ality in  our  thoughts  about  the  universe.  The 
mind,  like  the  dyer's  hand,  is  subdued  to  what 
it  works  in.  The  response  of  primitive  man 
to  the  pressure  of  Nature  upon  him  was  a  re- 

'  Christian  Theism,  pp.  40,  42. 


22   THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

sponse  of  wonder  and  awe  and  fear  ;  his  reli- 
gion was  instructive,  emotional;  but  through 
the  long  tuition  of  the  ages,  the  old  nurse  has 
taught  him  how  to  use  his  reason ;  and  he 
now  finds  unity  where  he  once  found  strife, 
and  order  and  law  where  once  confusion  and 
chaos  reigned.  His  religion  has  become  ra- 
tional. 

But  what  do  we  mean  when  we  say  that 
man's  great  teacher  has  been  Nature  ?  Nature, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  instinct  with  Reason,  and 
the  Reason  which  is  revealed  in  Nature  is  only 
another  name  for  God.  It  is  the  immanent 
God,  the  Eternal  Reason,  who  has  been  pa- 
tiently disclosing  himself  to  us  in  the  world 
round  about  us,  and  thus  cleansing  our  minds 
from  the  crude  and  superstitious  conceptions 
with  which  in  our  ignorance  and  fear  we  had 
invested  him. 

The  second  of  the  sources  from  which  the 
influences  have  come  for  the  purification  of 
religion  is  humanity  itself. 

We  are  told,  in  the  Book  of  Genesis,  that 
man  is  made  in  the  image  of  God ;  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  on  which 
the  entire  teaching  of  Jesus  rests,  is  but  a 
stronger  statement  of  the  same  truth.  It  is 


THE  ROOTS  OF  RELIGION  23 

true  that  we  find  human  nature,  as  yet,  for 
the  most  part,  in  very  crude  conditions;  its 
divine  qualities  are  not  clearly  seen.  It  does 
not  yet  appear  what  we  shall  be.  But  we  have 
learned,  in  our  evolutionary  studies,  that  no 
living  thing  ought  to  be  judged  in  the  earlier 
stages  of  its  development;  we  must  wait  to 
see  the  perfected  type  before  we  can  make  up 
our  minds  about  it.  The  eaglet  just  hatched 
does  not  give  us  the  right  idea  of  the  eagle, 
nor  does  the  infant  in  his  swaddling  clothes 
reveal  to  us  the  man.  So  it  is  with  species  and 
races  ;  if  they  are  undergoing  a  process  of  de- 
velopment, we  must  wait  for  the  later  stages 
of  the  process  before  we  judge.  The  apple  is 
not  the  crab,  but  the  Northern  Spy  ;  the  horse 
is  not  the  mustang,  but  the  Percheron  or 
the  German  roadster.  In  estimating  any  liv- 
ing thing,  you  take  into  consideration  its  pos- 
sibilities of  development ;  the  ideal  to  which 
it  may  attain  must  always  be  in  sight. 

In  the  same  way  when  we  think  of  man,  we 
do  not  take  the  Patagonian  as  the  type,  but 
the  best  specimens  of  European  or  American 
manhood. 

If,  then,  we  are  taught  to  believe  that  man 
is  a  child  of  God,  we  should  be  compelled  to 


24  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

believe  that  it  is  the  most  perfectly  developed 
man  who  most  resembles  God.  We  have  some 
conception  of  the  ideal  man.  Our  conceptions 
are  not  always  correct,  but  they  are  con- 
stantly improved,  as  we  strive  to  realize  them. 
And  in  the  ideal  man  we  see  reflected  the 
character  of  God.  We  are  sure  that  a  perfect 
humanity  would  give  us  the  best  revelation 
we  could  have  of  divinity.  If  we  could  see  a 
perfect  man,  we  could  learn  from  him  more 
about  God  than  from  any  other  source. 

Most  of  us  believe  that  a  perfect  Man  ap- 
peared in  this  world  nineteen  hundred  years 
ago ;  and  the  best  that  we  know  about  God 
we  have  learned  from  him.  More  has  been 
done  by  his  life  and  teachings  to  purify  reli- 
gion of  its  crudities  and  superstitions  than  by 
all  other  agencies.  The  worst  of  the  crudities 
and  superstitions  that  still  linger  in  our  own 
religion  are  due  to  the  fact  that  the  people 
who  bear  his  name  only  in  part  accept  his 
teachings  and  very  imperfectly  follow  his  ex- 
ample. If  we  could  all  believe  what  he  has 
told  us  and  do  what  he  has  bidden  us,  our  re- 
ligion would  soon  be  cleansed  from  its  worst 
defilements. 

The  manifestation  of  the  life  of  God  in 


THE   ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  25 

Jesus  Christ  we  call  The  Incarnation ;  and  it 
was  a  manifestation  so  much  more  perfect  than 
any  other  that  the  world  has  seen,  that  we  do 
well  to  put  the  definite  article  before  the  word. 
Yet  it  is  a  mistake  to  overlook  the  fact  that 
God  dwells  in  every  good  man,  and  manifests 
himself  through  him.  And  whenever,  in  any 
character,  the  great  quaHties  of  truth  and  jus- 
tice and  purity  and  courage  and  honor  and 
kindness  are  exhibited,  we  see  some  reflection 
of  the  character  of  God. 

In  many  a  home  the  father  and  the  mother, 
by  their  faithfulness  and  kindness  and  self- 
sacrifice,  make  it  easy  for  the  children  to  be- 
lieve in  a  good  God ;  and  in  every  community 
brave  and  true  and  saintly  men  and  women 
are  revealing  to  us  high  qualities  which  we 
cannot  help  interpreting  as  divine.  We  can- 
not imagine  that  God  is  less  just  or  fair  or 
kind  than  these  men  and  women  are;  they 
lift  up  our  ideals  of  goodness,  and  they  com- 
pel us  to  think  better  thoughts  of  him  in 
whom  all  our  ideals  are  united. 

Thus  it  is  that  our  humanity,  as  glorified 
by  the  Word  made  flesh,  and  as  lifted  up 
and  sanctified  by  the  lives  of  good  men  and 
women,  has  been  a  great  teacher  of  pure  reli- 


26  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

gion.  We  have  learned  what  to  think  about 
God  and  how  to  worship  him  aright  by  what 
he  has  shown  us  in  the  living  epistles  of  his 
goodness  and  grace  which  he  has  sent  into  the 
world,  and,  above  all,  in  that  "strong  Son  of 
God  "  whom  we  call  our  Master. 

The  other  source  from  which  the  influences 
have  come  by  which  religion  has  been  purified, 
is  that  divine  Spirit  who  is  always  in  the  world, 
and  always  waiting  upon  the  threshold  of 
every  man's  thought,  and  in  the  sub-conscious 
depths  of  every  man's  feeling,  to  enlighten 
our  understanding  and  purify  our  desires.  To 
every  man  he  gives  all  that  he  can  receive  of 
light  and  power.  To  many  his  gifts  are  but 
meagre,  because  their  capacities  are  small  and 
their  receptivity  is  limited;  but  there  are 
always  in  the  world  open  minds  and  docile 
tempers,  to  whom  he  imparts  his  larger  gifts. 
Thus  we  have  the  order  of  prophets  and  in- 
spired men,  whose  words  are  full  of  Hght  and 
leading.  In  the  Bible  we  have  a  record  of  the 
messages  given  by  such  men  to  the  world.  In 
that  teaching,  rightly  interpreted,  there  is 
great  power  to  correct  the  errors  and  cleanse 
away  the  delusions  and  superstitions  which  are 
apt  to  gather  about  our  religion.  We  cannot 


THE   ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  27 

estimate  too  highly  the  work  that  has  been 
done  by  these  sacred  writings  in  purifying  our 
conception  of  God. 

It  is  possible,  however,  to  treat  this  book 
in  a  manner  so  hard  and  literalistic  that  it 
shall  become  a  hindrance  rather  than  a  help 
to  the  better  knowledge  of  God.  The  one 
fact  that  it  brings  vividly  before  us  is  that 
fact  of  progress  in  religious  knowledge  which 
we  are  now  considering.  It  shows  us  how  men 
have  gone  steadily  forward,  under  the  leader- 
ship of  the  divine  Spirit,  leaving  old  concep- 
tions behind  them,  and  rising  to  larger  and 
larger  understanding  of  divine  things.  Any 
treatment  of  the  Book  which  fails  to  recog- 
nize this  fact  —  which  puts  all  parts  of  the 
Bible  on  the  same  level  of  spiritual  value  and 
authority  —  simply  ignores  the  central  truth 
of  the  Bible  and  perverts  its  whole  mean- 
ing. 

The  truth  which  we  need  to  emphasize  in 
our  use  of  the  Bible  is  the  truth  that  the 
same  Spirit  who  gave  the  men  of  the  olden 
time  their  message  is  with  us,  to  help  us  to  the 
right  understanding  of  it,  and  to  give  us  the 
message  for  our  time.  Nor  is  his  illumination 
confined  to  any  guild  or  rank  of  behevers; 


28  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

the  day  foretold  by  the  prophet  has  surely 
come,  when  the  Spirit  is  poured  upon  all  flesh, 
and  the  prophetic  gift  may  be  received  by  all 
the  pure  in  heart. 

The  one  glorious  fact  of  our  religion — a 
fact  but  dimly  realized  as  yet  by  the  church  — 
is  the  constant  presence  in  the  world  of  the 
Spirit  of  Truth.  If  there  is  anything  at  all 
in  religion,  this  divine  Spirit  is  ready  to  be 
the  Counselor,  Comforter,  and  Guide  of  every 
human  soul.  And  we  cannot  doubt  that  the 
steadily  enlarging  conception  of  the  character 
of  God  is  due  to  his  gracious  ministry. 

Such,  then,  are  the  sources  from  which  have 
come  that  better  knowledge  of  God  which 
makes  the  rehgion  of  our  time  to  differ  from 
the  religion  of  past  generations.  And  it  will 
be  seen  that  these  three  sources  are  but  one. 
It  is  the  divine  Reason  and  Love  himself  who 
has  been  revealing  himself  to  us  in  the  unity 
and  order  of  nature,  in  the  enlarging  life  of 
humanity,  in  the  inspired  insights  and  con- 
victions of  devout  believers.  What  we  are 
looking  upon  is  that  continuing  revelation  of 
God  to  the  world  which  has  been  in  progress 
from   the  beginning,  and  which  will   never 


THE  ROOTS   OF   RELIGION  29 

cease  until  the  world  is  full  of  the  knowledge 
of  God  as  the  sea  is  full  of  water. 

With  this  great  and  growing  revelation  the 
church  is  intrusted.  Its  business  in  the  world 
is  to  take  this  truth  about  God,  this  new 
truth,  this  larger  and  fairer  truth,  which  God 
himself,  in  the  creation  and  through  the 
incarnation  and  by  the  Indwelhng  Spirit,  has 
been  clearing  up  and  lifting  into  the  light, 
and  fill  modern  life  full  of  it.  This  is  the  truth 
which  modern  life  needs.  Religion  is  a  perma- 
nent fact,  but  its  forms  change  with  advancing 
knowledge.  There  are  forms  of  truth  which 
are  suited  to  the  needs  of  modern  life.  God 
himself  is  always  at  work  preparing  the  truth 
for  present  needs.  It  is  the  function  of  the 
church  to  understand  this  truth,  aud  make  it 
known  in  every  generation. 


n 

OUR   RELIGION   AND   OTHER   RELIGIONS 

Our  religion  is  the  Christian  religion.  This 
is  the  form  of  faith  which  the  church  in  our 
country  is  organized  to  promote.  Ours  is  a 
Christian  country. 

This  is  not  by  virtue  of  any  legal  establish- 
ment of  Christianity,  for  one  of  the  glories 
of  our  civilization  is  that  first  amendment  to 
our  national  constitution,  which  declares  that 
"  Congress  shall  make  no  law  respecting  an 
establishment  of  religion  or  prohibiting  the 
free  exercise  thereof."  Buddhists,  Hindus, 
Mohammedans,  Parsees,  Jews,  are  just  as  free 
to  exercise  their  respective  forms  of  religion  in 
this  country  as  are  the  Christians.  The  gov- 
ernment neither  forbids  nor  fosters  any  kind 
of  faith. 

Ours  is  a  Christian  country  because  nearly 
all  the  people  of  the  country  are,  by  birth  and 
by  choice,  identified  with  the  Christian  faith. 

Still  it  is  true  that  the  freedom  extended 
by  our  constitution  to  other  forms  of  faith 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    31 

has  been  claimed  by  some  of  their  adherents, 
and  we  have  in  the  United  States  a  goodly 
number  of  groups  representing  non-Christian 
creeds.  Of  these  the  Jews  constitute  much  the 
largest  number,  there  being,  perhaps,  six  or 
seven  hundred  Jewish  cono-regations  in  all 
parts  of  the  country.  There  are  also  sixty  or 
seventy  Chinese  temples,  a  few  groups  of  Par- 
sees  and  Mohammedans,  a  few  hundred  com- 
panies of  Spiritualists,  and  a  few  scores  of 
societies  of  Ethical  Culture  and  Free  Religion. 
All  told  there  are  not,  probably,  among  the 
eighty  millions  of  our  people,  more  than  a 
milhon  and  a  half  who  are  not  either  tradi- 
tionally or  nominally  Christians. 

Our  contact  with  the  Orient,  on  our  western 
frontier,  is  likely,  however,  to  bring  us  into 
close  relations,  in  the  near  future,  with  other 
ancient  forms  of  faith.  The  Christian  church 
in  modern  life  will  be  compelled  to  meet 
questions  raised  by  the  presence  of  Buddhists 
and  Confucians  and  Mohammedans,  and  to 
prove  its  superiority  to  these  religions.  The 
study  of  comparative  religion  has  had  hitherto 
purely  an  academic  interest  for  most  of  us; 
in  the  present  century  it  is  likely  to  become 
for   millions   a   practical   question.    Many  a 


32  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

young  man  and  young  woman  will  be  forced 
to  ask :  "  Why  is  the  religion  of  my  fathers 
a  better  religion  than  that  of  my  Hindu  asso- 
ciate or  my  Japanese  classmate?  "  The  answer, 
if  wisely  given,  may  be  entirely  satisfactory, 
but  the  question  must  not  be  treated  as  absurd 
or  irrelevant.  In  the  face  of  the  great  compe- 
titions into  which  it  must  enter,  our  religion 
must  be  ready  to  give  an  intelligent  account 
of  itself. 

One  of  the  first  questions  to  be  asked  when 
we  take  up  this  inquiry  is.  What  is  the  atti- 
tude of  our  religion  toward  the  other  religions? 
Perhaps  it  is  better  to  put  the  question  in  a 
concrete  form  and  ask.  What  is  the  attitude 
of  the  Christian  people  toward  the  people  of 
other  religions? 

The  answer  to  this  question  may  not  be  as 
prompt  and  confident  as  we  could  wish.  Many 
people  who  profess  and  call  themselves  Christ- 
ians are  not  so  broad-minded  or  so  generous 
hearted  as  they  ought  to  be,  and  they  are 
inclined  to  be  partisans  in  religion  as  well  as 
in  art  or  politics  ;  they  think  that  all  the  truth 
and  all  the  goodness  are  in  the  institutions 
with  which  they  are  allied,  and  that  all  the 
rest  are  of  the  evil  one.    But  such  people  are 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    33 

not  good  representatives  of  Christianity.  They 
never  learned  any  such  judgment  from  him 
■whom  they  call  their  Master.  And  we  may 
safely  claim  that  those  "who  have  the  mind  of 
Christ  are  tolerant  and  generous  toward  those 
■whose  opinions  or  -whose  religious  practices 
differ  from  their  o^wn.  They  do  not  forget 
that  their  Master  treated  -with  the  greatest 
sympathy  men  and  -women  whose  faiths 
g^'eatly  differed  from  his  own ;  that  some  of 
those  who  received  his  strongest  testimonies 
to  the  greatness  of  their  faith,  like  the  Roman 
centurion  and  the  Canaanitish  woman,  were 
pagans;  that  one  of  his  most  intimate  and 
gracious  conversations  on  the  deep  things  of 
the  Spirit  was  with  a  Samaritan  woman,  and 
that  his  representative  hero  of  practical  reli- 
gion was  a  Samaritan  man  whose  genuine 
goodness  he  placed  in  sharp  contrast  with  the 
heathen  selfishness  of  the  priest  and  the 
Levite  of  his  own  faith.  No  Christian  ever 
learned  to  be  a  bigot  by  sitting  at  the  feet  of 
Jesus  Christ.  And  I  think  we  may  justly 
claim  that  those  who  have  entered  into  the 
spirit  of  the  Christian  religion  are  always  gen- 
erous in  their  attitude  toward  those  who  wor- 
ship by  other  forms  of  faith. 


34     THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

They  cannot  forget  that  all  these  people 
whose  creeds  and  rites  differ  so  greatly  from 
their  own  are  children  of  our  Father,  and 
that  they  can  be  no  less  dear  to  him  than  we 
are;  and  it  is  therefore  hardly  possible  for 
them  to  imagine  that  he  can  have  left  them 
without  some  revelation  of  saving  truth.  They 
approach,  therefore,  the  religious  beliefs  of 
other  peoples  with  open  minds,  expecting  to 
find  in  them  elements  of  truth,  and  desiring  to 
put  themselves  into  sympathetic  and  cordial 
relations  with  those  whose  opinions  differ  from 
their  own. 

As  has  been  said,  not  all  those  who  are 
known  as  Christians  have  this  tolerant  tem- 
per, because  there  are  many  who  are  known 
as  Christians  who  have  but  dim  notions  of  what 
it  means  to  be  a  Christian.  It  was  once  the  pre- 
vailing assumption  that  all  religions  were  di- 
vided into  two  classes,  the  true  and  the  false; 
that  ours  was  the  true  religion  and  all  the 
others  were  false  religions.  That  the  heathen 
were  the  enemies  of  God  was  the  common  be- 
lief, and  it  was  a  grave  heresy  to  insinuate 
that  any  of  them  could  be  saved  without  re- 
nouncing their  false  religions  and  accepting 
the  true  religion.  This  was  the  basis  upon 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS   35 

•which  the  work  of  foreign  missions  was  long 
conducted,  and  there  are  still  many  who  bear 
the  Christian  name  who  have  not  yet  reached 
any  other  conception. 

But  the  church  in  modern  life  is  learning 
to  see  this  whole  matter  in  a  different  light. 
Our  best  modern  missionaries  decline  to  take 
this  attitude  in  dealing  with  men  of  other  re- 
ligions. They  do  not  regard  the  heathen  as 
outside  the  pale  of  the  divine  compassion ; 
they  seek  for  points  of  sympathy  between  their 
own  beliefs  and  those  of  the  people  to  whom 
they  are  sent.  From  no  other  sources  have 
come  stronger  testimonies  to  the  sympathy  of 
religions.  We  must  not,  these  veteran  mis- 
sionaries insist,  assume  that  our  religion  is 
the  only  true  religion,  while  all  the  others  are 
false  religions.  We  may  well  assume  that  all 
human  forms  of  faith  are  more  or  less  imper- 
fect —  our  own  as  well  as  theirs,  and  invite 
them  to  a  candid  comparison  of  the  differing 
systems.  If  our  own  is  really  superior,  if  it 
meets  universal  human  needs  more  perfectly, 
we  ought  not  to  fear  such  a  candid  compar- 
ison. But  we  must  be  ready  to  see  and  ap- 
prove the  good  that  is  theirs,  if  we  wish  them 
to  accept  the  good  that  is  ours. 


36  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

This  is  not  admitting  that  there  is  no  dif- 
ference —  that  one  religion  is  as  good  as  an- 
other ;  we  should  stultify  ourselves  by  making 
any  such  admission.  But  it  is  a  willingness  to 
recognize  truth  and  goodness  everywhere,  and 
to  rejoice  in  them.  And  we  must  show  that 
we  are  not  afraid  to  take  from  the  many  truth 
which  has  been  revealed  to  them  more  clearly 
than  to  us.  If  we  believe  in  the  universal  father- 
hood and  the  omnipresence  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
we  must  expect  to  find,  in  every  form  of  faith, 
some  elements  that  our  Christianity  needs.  In 
fact  Christianity,  through  all  its  history,  has 
been  appropriating  truth  which  it  has  found 
in  the  systems  with  which  it  has  come  in  con- 
tact, and  it  is  one  of  the  glories  of  Christianity 
that  it  has  the  power  to  do  this. 

A  great  Christian  scholar  has  just  published 
a  book  entitled  "  The  Growth  of  Christianity," 
in  which  he  shows  how  this  has  been  done. 
He  finds  that  "  just  as  Jewish  moraHty  was 
ennobled  and  beautified  by  the  teaching  of 
Christ  and  yet  made  an  essential  element  of 
that  teaching,  so  the  philosophy  of  Greece, 
the  mysticism  of  Asia,  and  the  civic  virtues  of 
Rome  were  taken  up  by  the  Christian  rehgion, 
which,  while  remaining  Christian,  was  modi- 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    37 

fied  by  their  influence.  This  process  cannot 
fairly  be  called  degeneration,  but  growth,  such 
growth  and  development  as  is  the  privilege  of 
every  truly  living  institution."  * 

It  is  true,  as  one  critic  suggests,  that  in 
taking  in  these  foreign  elements  Christianity 
not  only  made  some  important  gains,  but 
also  suffered  some  serious  losses.  Greek  philo- 
sophy and  Asian  mysticism  and  Roman  legal- 
ism are  responsible  for  certain  perversions  of 
Christianity,  as  well  as  for  enlargement  of  its 
content.  We  have  great  need  to  be  careful  in 
these  assimilations ;  some  kinds  of  food  are  rich 
but  not  easily  digested.  But  it  is,  as  I  have 
said,  a  chief  glory  of  Christianity  that  it  pos- 
sesses this  assimilative  power.  It  is  the  natural 
fruit  of  faith  in  the  divine  fatherhood.  We 
ought  to  be  able  to  believe  that  God  has  some 
revelations  to  make  to  us  through  our  brethren 
in  other  lands,  as  well  as  to  them  through  us. 
It  is  the  possession  of  this  power  which  fits 
Christianity  to  be  the  universal  religion. 

It  has  already  given  some  striking  proofs  of 
the  possession  of  this  power.  We  have  had, 
once,  upon  this  planet,  a  great  Parliament  of 
Religions,  in  which  the  representatives  of  all 

1  New  York  Independent,  September  12,  1907. 


38  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

the  great  faiths  now  existing  in  the  world 
were  gathered  together  for  comparison  of 
beliefs  and  experiences.  It  was,  perhaps,  the 
most  important  religious  gathering  which  has 
ever  assembled.  The  presiding  officer,  in  his 
opening  address,  thus  described  its  import :  — 

"If  this  congress  shall  faithfully  execute 
the  duties  with  which  it  has  been  charged,  it 
will  become  a  joy  of  the  whole  earth  and  stand 
in  human  history  like  a  new  Mount  Zion 
crowned  with  glory  and  making  the  actual 
beginning  of  a  new  epoch  of  brotherhood  and 
peace. 

"  In  this  congress  the  word  ^religion '  means 
the  love  and  worship  of  God  and  the  love  and 
service  of  man.  We  believe  the  Scripture  *  Of 
a  truth  God  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  but  in 
every  nation  he  that  feareth  God  and  worketh 
righteousness  is  accepted  of  him.'  We  come 
together  in  mutual  confidence  and  respect, 
without  the  least  surrender  or  compromise  of 
anything  which  we  respectively  believe  to  be 
truth  or  duty,  with  the  hope  that  mutual  ac- 
quaintance and  a  free  and  sincere  interchange 
of  views  on  the  great  questions  of  eternal  life 
and  human  conduct  will  be  mutually  benefi- 
cial. 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    39 

*'The  religious  faiths  of  the  world  have 
most  seriously  misunderstood  and  misjudged 
each  other,  from  the  use  of  words  in  meanings 
radically  different  from  those  which  they  were 
intended  to  bear,  and  from  a  disregard  of  the 
distinctions  between  appearances  and  facts, 
between  signs  and  symbols  and  the  things  sig- 
nified and  represented.  Such  errors  it  is  hoped 
that  this  congress  will  do  much  to  correct  and 
to  render  hereafter  impossible." 

Such  was  the  purpose  of  this  parliament, 
such  the  spirit  which  prompted  the  calling  of 
it,  and  found  utterance  in  its  conferences.  It 
was  surely  a  notable  and  beautiful  thing  for 
the  adherents  of  these  dissimilar  faiths,  whose 
ordinary  attitude  toward  one  another  has 
always  been  suspicious  and  oppugnant,  to 
come  together  in  this  friendly  way,  seeking 
a  better  understanding,  and  emphasizing  the 
things  that  make  for  unity.  And  whose  was 
this  parliament?  Which  religion  was  it  that 
conceived  of  it,  and  made  provision  for  it,  and 
set  in  motion  the  influences  that  drew  these 
hostile  bands  into  harmony?  It  was  the  Christ- 
ian religion  which  gave  us  this  great  endeavor 
after  unity.  And  it  is  highly  improbable  that 
such  a  movement  would  have  originated  in 


40  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

any  other  than  a  Christian  country,  or  among 
the  followers  of  any  other  Leader  than  the 
Man  of  Nazareth.  It  was  the  natural  thing  for 
the  disciples  of  Jesus  to  do  ;  and  while  many 
men  of  the  other  faiths  yielded  to  this  gracious 
influence,  and  were  thus  brought  under  the 
power  of  the  bond  that  unites  our  common 
humanity,  it  is  not  likely  that  any  of  them 
would  have  taken  the  initiative  in  such  an 
undertaking. 

We  may  hope  that  this  is  not  the  last  par- 
liament of  religions  ;  that  in  the  days  before 
us  such  manifestations  of  the  unity  of  the 
race  will  not  be  uncommon.  And  we  are  sure 
that  the  leaders  of  all  such  endeavors  will  be 
found  among  the  followers  of  the  Prince  of 
Peace. 

Here,  then,  we  find  one  clear  answer  to  the 
question  with  which  we  started.  The  Christian 
confessor  who  is  confronted  with  the  question 
"  What  reason  have  you  for  thinking  that  the 
religion  of  your  fathers  is  better  than  any 
other  form  of  faith?"  may  answer,  first,  "  It 
is  better  because  it  cares  more  for  the  unity 
of  the  race  than  any  other  religion  cares  ;  be- 
cause it  believes  more  strongly  in  the  essential 
brotherhood  of   all   worshipers ;    because   it 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS   41 

teaches  a  larger  charity  for  men  of  differing 
behefs,  and  more  perfectly  realizes  the  sym- 
pathy of  religions.  It  is  far  from  being  all 
that  it  ought  to  be,  on  this  side  of  its  develop- 
ment ;  many  of  its  adherents  are  still  full  of 
bigotry  and  intolerance  and  Pharisaic  conceit ; 
but  these  are  contrary  to  its  plainest  teachings, 
and  all  its  progress  is  in  the  direction  of  larger 
charity  for  men  of  all  religions.  Already,  in 
spite  of  its  failures,  it  has  shown  far  more  of 
this  temper  than  any  other  religion  has  exhib- 
ited;  and  when  it  gets  rid  of  its  own  sects 
and  schisms,  and  comes  closer  to  the  heart  of 
its  own  Master,  it  will  have  a  power  of  drawing 
the  peoples  together  which  no  other  religion 
has  ever  thouo^ht  of  exercising;." 

I  have  spoken  of  the  fact  that  Christianity 
claims  to  be  a  universal  religion.  That  was  the 
expectation  with  which  its  first  messengers 
were  sent  forth.  They  were  bidden  to  go  into 
all  the  world  and  preach  the  gospel  to  every 
creature.  There  has  never  been  any  other 
thought  among  the  loyal  followers  of  Jesus 
than  that  the  day  is  coming  when  every  knee 
shall  bow  to  him  and  every  tongue  confess 
him. 

This  expectation  of  universality  is  not  shared 


42  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

by  all  the  religions  of  the  earth.  Many  of  them 
are  purely  ethnic  faiths;  they  grow  out  of 
the  lives  of  the  peoples  who  adhere  to  them ; 
it  does  not  seem  to  be  supposed  that  any  other 
peoples  would  care  for  them  or  know  what  to 
do  with  them.  The  old  Romans  had  a  saying, 
"  Cujus  regio,  ejus  religio  "  —  which  means, 
Every  country  has  its  own  religion.  The  ear- 
lier Hebrews  had  the  same  idea ;  they  thought 
that  every  people  had  a  god  of  its  own.  Jeho- 
vah was  their  God  ;  Baal  was  the  god  of  the 
Phoenicians,  and  Chemosh  was  the  god  of 
Moab.  They  believed  that  Jehovah  was  a 
stronger  God  than  any  of  these  other  deities, 
but  they  did  not  seem  to  doubt  their  existence 
or  their  potency.  Even  the  prophet  Micah 
says :  "  For  all  the  peoples  will  walk  every 
one  in  the  name  of  his  god,  and  we  will  walk 
in  the  name  of  Jehovah  our  God  for  ever  and 
ever."  ^  The  later  prophets  gained  the  larger 
conception  of  universality  ;  they  believed  that 
there  was  but  one  supreme  God,  and  there- 
fore but  one  religion,  to  the  acceptance  of 
which  all  mankind  would  at  last  be  brought. 
The  narrower  conception  of  religion  as  a 
national  or  racial  interest  has,  however,  pre- 

*  Micah  iv,  5. 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    43 

vailed  and  still  prevails  among  many  peoples. 
The  Hindu  religion,  which  numbers  many  mil- 
lions of  votaries,  has  no  expectation  of  becom- 
ing a  world  religion.  Indeed,  it  could  not  well 
entertain  any  such  expectation  ;  the  system  of 
caste,  on  which  it  rests,  makes  it  necessarily 
exclusive.  It  has  no  missionary  impulse  ;  its 
adherents  are  content  with  a  good  which  they 
do  not  seek  to  share  with  other  peoples.  The 
same  thing  is  true  of  many  of  the  minor  faiths. 

Now  it  is  manifest  that  religions  which  do 
not  expect  to  be  universal  are  not  likely  to  ex- 
ceed their  own  expectations.  "  According  to 
your  faith  be  it  unto  you  "  is  as  true  of  systems 
as  of  men.  And  none  of  us  is  likely  to  be 
strongly  drawn  to  a  faith  which  has  really  no 
invitation  for  us,  no  matter  how  stoutly  it 
may  maintain  its  own  superiority.  No  religion 
which  has  only  a  tribal  or  racial  significance 
can  make  any  effective  appeal  to  our  credence. 
The  note  of  universality  must  be  struck  by 
any  religion  which  claims  our  suffrages. 

There  are  certain  great  living  religions 
which  make  this  claim  of  universality.  Juda- 
ism and  Parseeism  have  both  entertained  this 
expectation,  but  the  fewness  of  their  adherents 
at  the  present  time  indicates  that  the  expecta- 


44  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

tion  is  but  feebly  held.  The  three  living  faiths 
which  aspire  to  universal  dominion  are  Bud- 
dhism, Mohammedanism,  and  Christianity.* 
Each  of  these  hopes  to  possess  the  earth.  Each 
of  these  is  strong  enough  to  enforce  its  claim 
■with  some  measure  of  confidence. 

Recent  estimates  give  to  Buddhism  148, 
000,000  of  followers,  to  Mohammedanism 
177,000,000,  and  to  Christianity  477,000,000. 
Mohammedanism  has  been  rapidly  extending 
its  sway  in  Africa  during  recent  years ;  Bud- 
dhism is  not,  probably,  making  great  gains 
at  the  present  time. 

If  any  form  of  religion  is  to  become  uni- 
versal in  the  earth  it  would  appear  that  it 
must  be  one  of  these  three.  If  any  of  us 
wishes  to  exchange  the  religion  of  his  fathers 
for  another  faith,  his  choice  will  be  apt  to 
lie  between  Buddhism  and  Mohammedanism. 
What  claims  to  our  credence  and  allegiance 
could  either  of  them  set  up  ? 

It  would  not,  for  most  of  us,  be  an  easy 
thing  to  turn  from  the  faith  of  our  fathers  to 

*  I  do  not  include  Confucianism,  because  it  is,  primarily,  a 
system  of  ethics  or  sociology  rather  than  a  religion;  and  also 
because  it  seems  to  have  no  missionary  impulse,  and  no  ex- 
pectation of  universality. 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    45 

any  other  form  of  faith.  The  ideas  and  usages 
to  which  we  have  been  accustomed  all  our 
lives  are  not  readily  exchanged  for  those 
which  are  wholly  unfamiliar.  Rites  and  cere- 
monies and  customs  of  other  religions,  which 
may  be  intrinsically  as  reasonable  and  reverent 
as  our  own,  strike  upon  our  minds  unpleasantly 
because  they  are  unwonted.  It  would,  there- 
fore, be  somewhat  difficult  for  us  to  put  our- 
selves into  a  mental  attitude  before  either  of 
these  great  religions,  in  which  we  should  be 
able  to  do  full  justice  to  its  claims  upon  our 
credence. 

Yet  if  we  could  gain  the  breadth  of  view  to 
which  the  disciples  of  Christ  ought  to  attain, 
we  should  be  compelled  to  admit  that  each  of 
these  great  religions  has  rendered  some  im- 
portant service  to  mankind. 

What  those  services  have  been  can  only  be 
hinted  at  in  this  chapter.  Of  Islamism,  Bishop 
Boyd  Carpenter  testifies  that  it  "has  been,  and 
still  is,  a  great  power  in  the  world.  There  is 
much  in  it  that  is  calculated  to  purify  and 
elevate  mankind  at  a  certain  stage  of  history. 
It  has  the  power  of  redeeming  the  slaves  of  a 
degraded  polytheism  from  their  low  groveling 
conception  of  God  to  conceptions  which  are 


46  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

higher ;  it  has  set  an  example  of  sobriety  to 
the  world  and  has  shielded  its  followers  from 
the  drink  plague  which  destroys  the  strength 
of  nations.  And,  in  so  far  as  it  has  done  this, 
it  has  performed  a  work  which  entitles  it  to 
the  attention  of  man  and  no  doubt  has  been 
a  factor  in  God's  education  of  the  world."  ^ 

Of  Buddhism  even  more  could  be  said.  In 
the  words  of  Mr.  Brace :  — 

"Sometime  in  the  sixth  century  before  Christ 
there  appeared  in  Northern  India  one  of  those 
great  personaHties  who  in  a  measure  draw 
their  inspiration  directly  from  above.  .  .  , 
When  he  says,  *  As  a  mother  at  the  risk  of 
her  life  watcheth  over  the  life  of  her  child, 
her  only  child,  so  also  let  every  one  cultivate  a 
boundless  good-will  towards  all  beings,  .  .  . 
above  and  below  and  across,  unobstructed, 
without  hatred,  without  enmity,  standing, 
walking,  sitting,  or  lying,  as  long  as  he  be 
awake  let  him  devote  himself  to  this  state  of 
mind ;  this  way  of  living,  they  say,  is  the  best 
in  this  world '  —  when  these  words  come  to 
our  ears  we  hear  something  of  a  like  voice  to 
that  which  said,  ^  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that 
are  weary  and  heavy-laden.'  From  a  thousand 

'  Permanent  Elements  in  Religion,  p.  143. 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS   47 

legends  and  narratives  we  may  gather  that  to 
Gotama  the  Enlightened  (the  Buddha)  the 
barriers  of  human  selfishness  fell  away.  To 
him  the  miseries  of  the  poor,  the  slave,  the 
outcast,  were  his  own ;  the  tears  which  men 
had  shed  from  the  beginning,  *  enough  to  fill 
oceans,'  were  as  if  falling  from  his  eyes.  The 
great  pang  of  sorrow,  piercing  the  heart  of 
the  race,  inconsolable,  unspeakable,  struck  to 
his  own  heart.  For  him  the  sin  of  the  world, 
the  unsatisfied  desire,  the  fierce  passion  and 
hatred  and  lust,  poisoned  life,  and  he  cared 
for  nothing  except  for  what  would  change  the 
heart  and  remove  this  fearful  mass  of  evil."  * 

The  character  of  Gotama  as  it  emerges  from 
the  reek  of  tradition  is  one  of  the  noblest  in 
history,  and  while  the  religion  of  which  he 
was  the  leader  has  been  defiled  by  all  manner 
of  corruptions  and  superstitions,  it  has  borne 
much  good  fruit  in  the  life  of  many  peoples. 

It  would  be  easy  to  point  out  the  radical 
defects  in  both  these  religions ;  let  me  rather 
call  attention  to  some  of  the  distinguishing 
peculiarities  of  our  own  faith. 

1.  The  God  whom  Jesus  has  taught  us  to 
believe  in,  is  a  far  nobler  object  of  affection 

1  The  Unknown  God,  p.  228. 


48  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

and  trust  than  is  ever  presented  to  the  thought 
of  the  followers  of  Mohammed  or  of  Gotama. 
He  is  our  Heavenly  Father,  infinite  in  his 
purity,  his  truth,  his  kindness,  his  compassion, 
his  care  for  all  his  children. 

Now  it  is  true  that  the  central  and  funda- 
mental difference  in  religions  is  that  which 
concerns  the  character  of  the  deity.  The  best 
religion  is  that  which  worships  the  best  god. 
And  when  we  compare  the  Christian  concep- 
tion of  God  with  the  Buddhist  conception  or 
the  Mohammedan  conception,  we  cannot  fail 
to  see  which  is  the  highest  and  the  purest. 

A  brilliant  Japanese  scholar,  discussing  this 
subject  of  the  relative  values  of  religions,  was 
asked  if,  in  any  respect,  the  Christian  religion 
was  better  than  the  Oriental  religions,  and  he 
promptly  answered :  "  Yes ;  the  Christian  con- 
ception of  God  as  the  Heavenly  Father  is 
higher  and  better  than  that  of  any  Oriental 
reliction."  If  that  is  true  it  settles  the  whole 
question. 

It  is,  perhaps,  inaccurate  to  speak  of  Bud- 
dhism as  having  any  conception  of  God.  "  The 
very  idea  of  a  god  as  creating  or  in  any  way 
ruling  the  world,"  says  one  authority,  "is  ut- 
terly absent  in  the  Buddhist  system.  God  is 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    49 

not  so  much  as  denied,  he  is  simply  not  known." 
Buddha  taught  men  to  be  compassionate  to  one 
another,  but  he  did  not  teach  them  to  look 
above  themselves  for  any  divine  compassion. 
It  is  true  that  they  now  venerate  him,  and  even 
pray  to  him ;  for  the  human  soul  will  pray, 

—  its  instinct  of  dependence,  its  craving  for 
fellowship  with  something  higher  than  itself 
will  prevail  over  all  theories;  but  this  prayer 
must  be  somewhat  incoherent,  for  the  wor- 
shiper believes  that  Buddha  has  no  longer  any 
conscious  or  personal  existence.  And  there  is 
certainly  no  conception  in  his  mind  of  any 
such  fatherly  relation  with  any  Power  above 
himself,  who  loves  him  and  cares  for  him  and 
knows  how  to  help  him,  as  that  which  Jesus 
has  revealed  to  us. 

The  Mohammedan  Deity  is  indeed  a  person, 
but  he  is  a  relentless,  omnipotent  Will.  The 
worst  phases  of  the  old  Calvinism  —  those 
which  have  disappeared  from  Christian  thought 

—  are  the  central  ideas  of  the  Mohamme- 
dan creed.  God  is  represented  in  the  Koran 
as  fitful  and  revengeful,  as  arbitrary  and  de- 
spotic ;  he  is  a  very  different  being  from  the 
God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

2.  The  religion  of  Jesus  emphasizes,  as  no 


50     THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

other  religion  has  done,  "  the  redemptive  prin- 
ciple in  its  idea  of  God."  It  does  not  hide  the 
fact  of  moral  evil  as  the  source  of  all  our  woes, 
hut  it  shows  an  eternal  purpose  in  the  heart 
of  God  to  save  man  from  sin,  even  at  the 
cost  of  suffering  to  himself.  This  is  the  mean- 
ing of  redemption  ;  it  is  the  salvation  of  men 
through  a  divine  self-sacrifice.  No  such  reve- 
lation of  the  love  of  God  as  this  has  ever  been 
made  to  the  world,  except  through  the  life 
and  teachings  and  death  of  Jesus  Christ.  No 
wonder  that  when  it  is  simply  and  clearly  pre- 
sented to  men  it  wins  their  hearts.  A  Chinese 
woman,  listening  to  a  recital  of  this  redemptive 
work  of  God,  turned  suddenly  to  her  neigh- 
bor and  said,  "  Did  n't  I  tell  you  that  there 
ought  to  be  a  God  like  that  ?  " 

We  shall  look  in  vain  through  the  scrip- 
tures of  the  other  religions  for  any  such  con- 
ception of  the  relation  of  God  to  men.  Men 
must  save  themselves  by  their  own  endeavors ; 
they  must  obey  or  they  will  suffer ;  perchance 
by  their  own  suffering  they  may  be  purified  : 
but  that  God  should  stoop  to  earth  and  stand 
by  the  side  of  sinning  and  suffering  man,  and 
save  him  by  suffering  with  him,  is  a  truth  to 
which  none  of  them  has  risen. 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    51 

3.  Christianity,  above  all  other  faiths,  is  the 
religion  of  hope.  It  not  only  kindles  in  our 
hearts  the  hope  of  overcoming  the  sin  which 
is  our  worst  enemy,  but  it  conquers  in  our 
hearts  the  fear  of  death  and  opens  up  to  us 
the  prospect  of  unending  and  glorious  future 
life,  in  the  society  of  those  most  dear  to  us. 

Mohammedanism  also  permits  us  to  hope 
for  future  blessedness,  albeit  its  representations 
of  the  life  to  come  are  not  always  such  as  to 
purify  and  elevate  our  thoughts.  Buddhism, 
on  the  contrary,  though  it  tells  us  that  we  may 
be  reborn  many  times,  assures  us  that  each 
reappearance  in  this  world  will  be  attended 
with  suffering  and  struggle ;  from  which,  if 
we  continue  to  walk  in  the  true  path,  striv- 
ing more  and  more  to  conquer  our  desires,  we 
may  at  length  hope  to  be  delivered  ;  but  the 
blessedness  which  comes  at  the  end  of  all  this 
struggle  is  simply  forgetf ulness :  we  shall  lose 
our  identity  and  be  remerged  in  that  fount  of 
Being  from  which  at  first  we  came.  Existence 
is  the  primal  evil :  to  get  rid  of  ourselves  is 
what  we  are  to  strive  for ;  salvation  is  our  dis- 
appearance out  of  life,  our  absorption  in  the 
ocean  of  unconsciousness.  This  is  the  best 
that  Buddhism  has  to  offer  us.    Not  many  of 


52     THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

us,  I  dare  say,  will  wish  to  exchange  for  this 
the  Christian  hope. 

There  are  many  other  characteristics  of  the 
Christian  faith  on  which  it  would  be  interest- 
ing to  reflect,  but  these  three  great  elements 
are  sufficient  to  enable  us  to  form  our  judg- 
ment as  to  its  comparative  value.  No  religion 
which  in  these  particulars  is  inferior  can  ever 
draw  the  world  away  from  the  leadership  of 
Jesus  Christ.  And  it  ought  to  be  clear  to  all 
who  can  comprehend  the  needs  of  human 
nature  that  while  these  other  faiths,  in  view 
of  the  great  services  they  have  rendered  to 
mankind,  are  not  to  be  despised ;  and  while 
it  is  probable  that  the  world,  until  the  end  of 
it,  will  be  indebted  to  them  for  contributions 
which  they  have  made  to  our  knowledge  of 
the  highest  things ;  yet  there  is  no  good  rea- 
son why  any  one  who  has  been  walking  in 
the  light  that  shines  from  the  life  and  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  Christ  should  wish  to  turn 
from  his  way  into  the  ways  of  Mohammed  or 
Gotama. 

It  is  not  by  any  happy  accident  that  Christ- 
ianity is  growing  far  more  rapidly  than  any 
other  form  of  faith,  and  now  vastly  outnumbers 
every  other ;  it  is  not  a  strange  thing  that  the 


OUR  RELIGION  AND  OTHER  RELIGIONS    53 

lands  in  which  it  prevails  are  far  more  pros- 
perous and  far  more  powerful  than  the  lands 
in  which  other  religions  prevail.  It  is  winning 
the  world.  It  is  winning  the  world  because 
its  interpretation  of  life  is  a  truer  interpre- 
tation than  any  other  religion  has  offered ; 
because  it  meets  and  supplies  the  deepest 
wants  of  men  more  perfectly  than  any  other 
religion  meets  and  supplies  them. 

The  great  evolutionary  law  is  at  work  here, 
as  everywhere.  There  is  a  struggle  for  exist- 
ence among  rehgions,  as  among  all  other  forms 
of  life.  The  law  of  variation  has  had  full  play 
in  all  this  realm  ;  human  nature  has  produced 
a  great  variety  of  religious  ideas  and  forms, 
and  natural  selection  is  doing  its  work  u{)on 
them.  The  fittest  will  survive.  And  the  fittest 
religion  will  be  the  religion  that  ministers 
most  perfectly  to  human  needs;  that  makes 
the  best  and  strongest  men  and  women ;  that 
rears  up  the  most  fruitful  and  the  most  endur- 
ing civihzation. 

Everything  visible  within  the  horizon  of 
our  thought  to-day  indicates  that  the  religion 
which  will  survive  —  the  permanent  religion, 
the  universal  religion  —  will  be  the  Christian 
religion. 


54  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

It  will  gather  into  itself  the  best  elements 
out  of  every  other  form  of  faith,  but  the  con- 
structive ideas  will  be  those  which  have  found 
most  perfect  expression  in  the  teachings  of 
Jesus  Christ. 


/ 


ni 

THE    SOCIAL    SIDE    OF    RELIGION 

We  have  found  in  our  previous  studies  that 
rehgion  is  a  central  and  permanent  element 
in  human  nature,  and  that  Christianity  bids 
fair  to  be  the  permanent  form  of  religion. 

But  the  readers  of  these  pages  are  constantly 
meeting  with  those  who  would  admit  both 
these  statements,  yet  who  are  disposed  to  deny 
or  ignore  the  value  of  the  church  in  modern 
society.  They  believe  in  religion,  they  say; 
they  even  believe  in  the  principles  of  Christ- 
ianity ;  they  may  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  they 
believe  in  Christ ;  but  they  do  not  believe  in 
the  church.  What  they  seem  to  object  to  is 
organized  religion.  They  appear  to  think  that 
it  ought  to  be  diffused,  somehow,  like  an  at- 
mosphere, through  the  community.  We  hear 
Christians  talk,  sometimes,  about  "  the  invisi- 
ble church  ;  "  that  is  the  only  kind  of  church 
which  these  objectors  are  disposed  to  tolerate. 
Institutional  religion  is  the  special  object  of 
their  distrust. 


56  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

Some  of  the  more  radical  among  them 
oppose  religious  organizations,  not  because 
these  organizations  are  religious,  but  because 
they  have  an  antipathy  for  all  forms  of  social 
organization.  It  does  not  take  an  open-eyed 
onlooker  long  to  discover  that  social  organiza- 
tions of  all  kinds  are  infested  with  many  evils. 
Social  machinery  is  never  perfect  in  its  con- 
struction or  operation.  It  is  always  getting 
out  of  gear;  there  is  endless  friction  and 
clatter  and  confusion ;  it  takes  a  great  deal  of 
trouble  to  keep  it  moving,  and  its  product  is 
often  of  poor  quality.  When  men  get  together 
and  try  to  cooperate  for  any  purpose,  by 
orderly  methods,  they  are  always  sure,  be- 
cause of  the  imperfection  of  human  nature,  to 
do  a  certain  amount  of  mischief.  Often  their 
organization  tends  to  tyranny ;  freedom  is  un- 
duly restricted ;  selfish  men  get  possession  of 
the  power  accumulated  in  the  organization, 
and  use  it  for  their  own  aggrandizement ;  it 
becomes,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  an  instru- 
ment of  oppression.  Thus  government,  which 
is  normally  the  organization  of  political  society 
for  the  protection  of  liberty  and  the  promotion 
of  the  general  welfare,  sometimes  becomes,  as 
in  Russia,  a  grinding  despotism  despoiling  the 


THE  SOCIAL  SIDE  OF  RELIGION      57 

many  for  the  enrichment  of  the  few.  Thus, 
in  our  American  politics,  we  have  the  machine, 
which  is  simply  the  perversion  of  party  organ- 
ization, and  which  in  many  instances  has 
become,  under  the  manipulation  of  greedy 
and  conscienceless  men,  an  evil  of  vast  pro- 
portions. 

Looking  upon  these  abuses  with  which  po- 
htical  organizations  of  all  kinds  are  always 
encumbered,  some  men  propose  to  abolish  all 
forms  of  political  organization.  This  is  an- 
archism, of  which  there  are  two  varieties,  — 
the  anarchism  of  violence,  and  the  anarchism 
of  non-resistance.  Czolgosz  represents  one  type 
and  Tolstoy  the  other.  For  the  anarchism 
of  violence  we  can  have  only  detestation  and 
horror;  to  the  anarchism  which  expects  to 
abolish  laws  by  ignoring  them  and  suffering 
the  consequences,  we  must  extend  a  respect- 
ful toleration.  Nevertheless  the  anarchism  of 
Tolstoy  offers  us  a  programme  which  is  hardly 
thinkable.  For  we  are  made  to  live  and  work 
together;  and  if  we  work  together  effectively 
we  must  have  rules  and  working  agreements, 
methods  of  cooperation,  and  these,  whatever 
name  we  may  give  them,  will  have  the  force  of 
constitutions  and  laws.  The  great  cooperations, 


68  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

on  which  the  welfare  of  society  depends,  in- 
volve social  organization.  Even  if  the  form 
which  this  takes  should  be  largely  economic, 
it  would  have  political  force  and  significance. 
Man  is  a  political  animal ;  it  is  his  nature  to 
live  politically ;  and,  as  Horace  says,  you  may 
drive  out  nature  with  a  pitchfork,  but  she  is 
sure  to  come  back.  And  the  same  weaknesses 
of  human  nature  which  infested  the  old  forms 
of  organization  would  be  found  in  the  new 
ones,  unless  human  nature  itself  were  regen- 
erated. 

Those  who  would  destroy  political  society 
on  account  of  its  abuses  are,  therefore,  guilty 
of  the  same  foolishness  as  that  of  the  man  who 
burned  his  house  to  get  rid  of  the  rats.  Doubt- 
less the  rats  all  escaped  and  were  ready  to 
enter,  with  reinforcements,  into  the  new  house 
as  soon  as  it  was  builded. 

The  same  reasoning  applies  to  ecclesiastical 
anarchism.  Those  who,  because  of  the  defects 
of  church  organizations,  would  abolish  the 
churches,  are  equally  unpractical.  For  it  is 
not  only  true,  as  we  saw  in  our  first  chapter, 
that  religion  is  a  primal  fact  of  human  nature, 
it  is  equally  true  that  religion  everywhere 
has  a  social  manifestation.  The  same  impulse 


THE  SOCIAL   SIDE  OF   RELIGION       59 

which  moves  men  to  worship,  draws  them  to- 
gether in  their  worship. 

Any  deep  or  stroiii^  emotion  makes  human 
beings  congregate.  Just  as  a  flock  of  sheep 
huddle  together  when  they  are  frightened,  so 
men,  when  deeply  moved  for  any  cause,  seek 
one  another.  As  the  impulse  of  religion  is  one 
of  those  by  which  men  are  most  deeply  moved, 
it  always  brings  them  together. 

So  long  as  religion  keeps  the  form  of  fear 
it  produces  this  result ;  when  fear  is  succeeded 
by  more  grateful  emotions,  and  men  begin  to 
have  some  sense  of  the  goodness  of  the  Power 
they  have  been  blindly  worshiping,  then  their 
gladness  and  gratitude  bring  them  together. 
Religion,  therefore,  in  all  lands  and  ages,  has 
been  a  social  interest ;  indeed,  it  has  been  the 
strongest  of  the  bonds  uniting  human  beings. 
To  demand  a  religion  which  should  have  no 
social  expression  is  to  fly  in  the  face  of  nature, 
and  forbid  causes  to  bring  forth  their  normal 
effects.  Wherever  there  is  religion  men  will  be 
associated,  and  their  worship  and  their  work 
will  be  carried  on  under  forms  of  social  organ- 
ization. Anarchism  is  no  more  thinkable  or 
workable  in  religion  than  in  politics. 

If  this  is  true  of  religion  in  general,  it  is 


60  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

eminently  true  of  the  Christian  rehgion.  The 
characteristic  note  of  Christianity  is  its  empha- 
sis on  the  social  relations.  In  this  it  simply 
exhibits  what  we  may  call  its  scientific  temper, 
its  tendency  to  keep  close  to  the  facts  of  life, 
to  give  the  right  interpretation  to  nature  and 
to  human  nature. 

A  modern  sociologist  ^  tells  us  that "  the  sole 
point  of  view,  aim  and  goal  of  Jesus,  in  all  his 
teaching  and  by  implication  of  all  his  acts, 
was  social.  The  divine  Father  whom  he  pro- 
claimed was  social  —  a  Being  whose  one  attri- 
bute was  love."  When  we  say  that  "  God  is 
love,"  this  is  what  we  mean.  He  delights  in 
companionship,  and  finds  his  happiness  in  the 
relations  which  uuite  him  with  his  creatures. 
Since  his  own  supreme  good  is  in  these  recipro- 
cal affections  and  services,  we  cannot  imagine 
that  he  could  expect  us  to  find  our  good  in  any 
different  way.  If  we  share  our  Father's  nature, 
we  must  seek  our  happiness  where  he  finds  his. 
The  blessedness  of  life  must  therefore  be  in 
our  social  relations.  Such  is  the  teaching  of 
Jesus.    Such  is  the  essence  of  Christianity. 

While,  therefore,  every  religion  by  its  very 
nature  tends  to  bring  men  together,  Clirist- 
1  Professor  D,  M.  Fisk. 


THE  SOCIAL  SIDE  OF   RELIGION       61 

ianity  lifts  the  social  impulse  into  the  light 
and  sanctifies  and  transfigures  it,  making  it 
not  merely  a  concomitant  of  religion  but  the 
heart  of  religion.  The  effect  of  this  revelation 
was  seen  in  all  the  ministry  of  Jesus.  Where- 
ever  he  went  the  people  flocked  together. 
"  Great  multitudes  followed  him."  Into  the 
wildernesses,  up  to  the  mountain  tops,  across 
the  stormy  lake,  they  made  their  way;  it  was 
a  day  of  great  congregations.  It  was  because 
they  wanted  to  be  with  him,  of  course ;  but 
when  they  came  to  him  they  came  together,  and 
one  of  the  things  he  sought  for  them  was  that 
they  should  like  to  be  together.  That  was 
surely  a  lesson  that  they  learned  of  him  ;  for 
as  soon  as  he  had  gone  they  began  to  gravitate 
together.  Every  day  they  met,  sometimes  in  the 
temple  courts,  sometimes  in  their  own  homes, 
for  praise  and  prayer ;  every  evening  they  par- 
took together,  in  little  groups,  of  a  simple 
meal,  in  memory  of  him.  Their  religion,  from 
the  start,  manifested  a  marked  social  tendency. 
Indeed,  we  might  give  it  a  stronger  word,  and 
say  that,  in  the  beginning,  it  was  sociahstic;  it 
seemed  to  threaten  a  complete  reconstruction 
of  the  industrial  order.  For  "  all  that  believed 
were  together,  and  had  all  things  common ; 


62     THE    CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

and  they  sold  their  possessions  and  goods,  and 
parted  them  to  all,  as  every  man  had  need."  * 
Just  how  far  this  communistic  experiment 
was  carried  it  is  difficult  to  say,  but  it  is  evi- 
dent that  the  disciples  felt  that  their  religion 
ought  to  permeate  and  control  their  entire 
social  life.  And  there  has  never  since  been  a 
day  when  the  social  side  of  religion  has  not 
been  recognized  and  provided  for.  The  very 
impulse  which  is  kindled  in  their  hearts  when 
they  are  brought  into  association  with  Christ, 
brings  men  together.  Communion,  fellowship, 
these  are  the  first  words  they  learn.  It  has 
been  so  from  the  beginning.  One  of  the  great 
Christians  of  the  apostolic  age  admonished  his 
converts  against  "  forsaking  the  assembling 
of  themselves  together,"  and  that  admonition 
has  always  been  heeded.  No  other  religion 
has  brought  people  together  so  constantly 
and  in  so  many  ways  as  Christianity  has  done. 
Christian  people  are  always  getting  together, 
to  pray  together,  to  sing  together,  to  partake 
together  of  the  sacraments,  to  listen  together 
to  the  teaching  of  the  pulpit,  to  study  the 
Bible  together,  to  take  counsel  together  about 
their  work,  to  unite  their  efforts,  in  manifold 

^  Acts  ii,  44,  45. 


THE  SOCIAL  SIDE  OF   RELIGION       63 

cooperations,  for  the  upbuilding  of  the  King- 
dom. They  have  even  come  to  beheve  —  and 
they  are  profoundly  right  about  it  —  that  it  is 
a  good  thing  for  people  to  come  together  just 
for  the  sake  of  being  together,  even  when  no 
distinctly  religious  business  assembles  them. 
To  establish  and  promote  pleasant  and  ami- 
cable social  relations  between  human  beings 
is  a  Christian  thing  to  do.  It  is  a  sign  of  the 
progress  of  the  Kingdom,  and  a  preparation 
for  it,  when  men  and  women  enjoy  meeting 
one  another  for  no  other  reason  than  that 
they  like  to  be  together.  It  is  a  condition 
of  the  manifestation  of  the  love  which  is  the 
fulfilling  of  all  law.  The  stranger,  as  many 
languages  testify,  is  apt  to  be  the  enemy.  The 
chief  reason  why  he  is  dreaded  and  hated  is 
that  he  is  not  known.  Acquaintance  allays  sus- 
picion and  promotes  sympathy  and  kindness. 
Not  the  least  of  the  services  which  Christ- 
ianity has  rendered  to  the  world  may  be  seen 
in  what  it  has  accomplished  in  bringing  hu- 
man beings  together  socially.  Setting  aside 
its  purely  religious  function,  it  has  done,  in 
Europe  and  America,  more  than  all  other 
agencies  put  together  to  promote  acquaint- 
ances and  neighborly  relations  among  men.  It 


64  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

has  done,  as  we  shall  see  by  and  by,  far  less  than 
it  ought  to  have  done  in  this  direction ;  its 
failures  in  this  department  of  its  work  have 
been  manifold  and  grievous ;  but  after  all  this 
is  admitted,  it  must  still  be  affirmed  that  it  has 
done  most  of  what  has  been  done  to  socialize 
mankind,  and  no  other  institution  or  agency 
is  entitled  to  throw  stones  at  it  because  of  its 
deficiencies. 

When,  therefore,  those  who  read  these  chap- 
ters hear  the  criticisms  and  cavils  to  which  I 
referred  at  the  beginning,  they  will  know  how 
to  reply  to  them. 

When  they  hear  an  argument  which  as- 
sumes that  the  church  is  worse  than  useless 
because  all  social  institutions  are  worse  than 
useless,  they  may  answer  that  the  reasoning 
is  unsound,  because  it  repudiates  the  deepest 
facts  of  human  nature ;  that  social  institutions, 
the  church  among  them,  are  natural  growths 
as  truly  as  the  cornfields  and  the  forests. 

When  they  hear  any  one  maintaining  that 
he  believes  in  the  principles  of  Christianity 
but  not  in  the  social  organizations  which  em- 
body these  principles,  they  may  well  reply 
that  the  principles  of  Christianity  naturally 
and  inevitably  embody  themselves  in  forms  of 


THE   SOCIAL  SIDE  OF   RELIGION       65 

social  organization ;  that  you  could  no  more 
prevent  it  than  you  could  prevent  light  from 
breaking  into  color  or  spring  from  coming  in 
May ;  that,  as  a  matter  of  history,  the  growth 
of  Christianity  has  been  signalized  by  a  mar- 
velous development  of  the  social  sentiments 
and  habitudes  which  must  find  expression  in 
some  kind  of  social  cooperation  ;  and  that, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  after  all  necessary  deduc- 
tions have  been  made,  the  church  has  been  a 
powerful  agency  in  developing  that  temper  of 
likemindedness  which  makes  civilized  society 
possible. 

There  is  still  another  cavil  to  which  it  may 
be  needful  to  refer.  It  is  based  on  the  notion 
that  religion,  after  all,  is  a  purely  individual 
affair ;  that  it  concerns  only  the  relations  be- 
tween the  soul  and  its  God ;  that  therefore 
public  worship  is  not  only  needless  but  un- 
seemly. Prayer  is  sometimes  described  as  "  the 
flight  of  one  alone  to  the  only  One ; "  and  it 
is  sometuues  contended  that  any  other  than 
private  prayer  is  a  violation  of  all  the  higher 
sanctities.  If  this  were  true,  of  course  the 
church  would  be  an  anomaly  or  an  imposition. 
And  while  there  are  not  many  who  would  urge 
this  argument  unfalteringly,  some  such  notion 


66  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

as  this  may  be  found  lying  at  the  bottom  of 
a  good  many  minds. 

The  words  of  Jesus,  in  the  sixth  chapter  of 
Matthew,  are  sometimes  quoted  in  support 
of  this  criticism  upon  public  worship :  "  And 
when  ye  pray,  ye  shall  not  be  as  the  hypo- 
crites ;  for  they  love  to  stand  and  pray  in  the 
synagogues  and  in  the  corners  of  the  streets, 
that  they  may  be  seen  of  men.  Verily  I  say 
unto  you,  They  have  their  reward.  But  thou, 
when  thou  prayest,  enter  into  thine  inner 
chamber,  and  having  shut  thy  door,  pray  to 
thy  Father  which  is  in  secret,  and  thy  Father 
which  seeth  in  secret  shall  recompense  thee."  ^ 

But  we  must  learn  to  interpret  the  words 
of  Jesus  as  meeting  the  occasion  on  which 
they  were  spoken ;  and  before  we  base  any 
generahzations  or  rules  of  conduct  upon  them, 
we  must  bring  together  all  that  he  said  and 
did  which  bears  upon  the  case  in  hand,  and 
try  to  arrive  at  some  meaning  which  shall  in- 
clude and  explain  it  all.  When  we  treat  the 
utterances  and  acts  of  Jesus  after  this  manner, 
we  shall  find  that  no  such  deduction  as  that 
which  we  are  considering  can  be  drawn  from 
them. 

1  Matt.  vi.  5,  6. 


THE  SOCIAL  SIDE   OF  RELIGION       67 

We  discover,  in  the  first  place,  that  he  him- 
self did  not  always  pray  in  secret ;  for  several 
of  his  prayers  made  in  public  places  are  re- 
ported for  us.  Moreover,  he  told  his  disciples 
that  when  even  two  or  three  of  them  were 
gathered  together  in  his  name,  he  would  be  in 
the  midst  of  them.  The  implication  is  that 
they  would  be  in  the  habit  of  gathering  to- 
gether in  his  name,  and  that  there  would  gen- 
erally be  many  more  than  two  or  three  of 
them. 

The  only  form  of  prayer  which  he  has  left 
us  is  manifestly  intended  primarily,  not  for 
secret  worship,  but  for  social  worship.  The 
pronouns  of  the  "  Lord's  Prayer  "  are  all  in 
the  plural  number  :  "  Our  father  who  art  in 
heaven ; "  "  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread." 
For  solitary  prayer  these  phrases  are  not 
suitable. 

When  he  went  away  from  his  disciples  he 
left  them  a  great  promise  of  the  manifestation 
to  them  of  that  Spirit  which  had  been  given 
without  measure  to  him ;  and  he  bade  them 
tarry  in  Jerusalem  until  that  promise  should 
be  fulfilled.  Accordingly  they  assembled, 
about  one  hundred  and  twenty  of  them,  in 
an  upper  room  in  Jerusalem,  and  "  continued 


68  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

steadfastly  "  in  prayer  together  for  many  days. 
The  response  to  this  prayer  was  that  out- 
pouring of  the  Spirit  by  which  the  apostolic 
church  was  inspired,  and  equipped  for  its  work. 
Saint  Peter  told  the  disciples  that  this  was  the 
gift  of  the  ascended  Christ,  —  the  fulfillment 
of  his  promise  to  them.  If  this  was  true,  it 
can  hardly  be  conceived  that  he  disapproved 
of  the  common  prayer  in  answer  to  which  this 
gift  had  come. 

Nor  can  any  reasonable  interpreter  of  his 
words  and  deeds  imagine  that  he  intended  his 
admonition  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Matthew 
to  be  taken  as  a  prohibition  of  public  worship 
or  of  social  prayer.  Those  words  were  simply 
a  reproof  of  ostentation  in  worship.  The  Phar- 
isees, whose  conduct  he  is  castigating,  "  loved 
to  pray  standing  in  the  synagogues  and  in 
the  corners  of  the  streets,  that  they  might  be 
seen  of  men."  It  was  a  private  and  personal 
prayer,  offered  in  a  public  place,  to  advertise 
the  devotion  of  the  worshiper.  With  our  pri- 
vate and  personal  prayers  the  public  has  no 
concern  ;  it  is  a  manifest  indelicacy  to  thrust 
them  before  the  public  ;  the  place  for  them 
is  the  secret  chamber.  Individual  sins  and 
sorrows  and  needs  we  all  have,  and  when  we 


THE  SOCIAL  SIDE   OF  RELIGION       69 

talk  with  our  Father  about  them  we  ought  to 
be  alone  with  him;  but  we  have  also  common 
sins  and  sorrows  and  needs,  and  it  is  well  for 
us  to  be  together  when  we  talk  with  him  about 
them.  It  is  therefore  a  gross  perversion  of 
these  words  of  Jesus  to  quote  them  in  condem- 
nation of  acts  of  public  worship.  His  entire 
life  and  the  example  of  all  those  who  were 
nearest  to  him,  as  well  as  the  testimony  of  the 
best  Christians  in  all  the  ages,  unite  to  render 
such  a  notion  incredible. 

If  I  have  succeeded  in  answering  the  cavils 
which  seek  to  discredit  the  church  as  a  social 
organization,  and  especially  as  an  agency  for 
the  maintenance  of  social  worship,  let  me  go 
on  to  suggest  some  positive  reasons  for  the 
existence  of  such  an  agency. 

Such  an  opportunity  as  the  church  offers 
for  social  worship  is  essential  to  the  mainte- 
nance of  religion.  Religious  feeling  the  expres- 
sion of  which  was  confined  to  the  relations 
between  the  individual  and  his  God,  would 
become  self-centred,  egoistic,  and  morbid.  If 
there  were  no  praying  but  secret  praying,  if 
the  social  element  were  eliminated  from  prayer 
and  praise,  faith  would  take  on  ascetic  forms, 
devotion  would  become  rancid,  sympathy  would 


70  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

be  smothered,  and  the  character  of  the  wor- 
shiper would  be  hardened  and  belittled. 
There  is  a  place  and  a  time,  as  we  have  seen, 
for  private  devotion ;  probably  many  of  us 
make  far  less  use  of  it  than  would  be  good 
for  us ;  but  any  attempt  to  shut  our  religion 
into  the  closet  would  be  suicidal.  It  would 
mould  there.  To  keep  it  fresh  and  wholesome 
it  must  be  taken  out  into  the  light  and  air ; 
the  winds  of  heaven  must  blow  through  it ; 
our  desires  must  mingle  with  the  desires  of 
others;  our  voices  must  join  with  their  voices; 
we  must  learn  to  think  of  the  needs,  the  strug- 
gles, the  sorrows,  the  hopes  that  are  common 
to  us  all,  to  put  ourselves  in  other  people's 
places  when  we  pray,  to  feel  that  our  religion 
is  a  bond  that  binds  us  to  our  kind. 

There  is  a  kind  of  prayer  which  we  could 
only  use  in  the  closet, — intimate,  personal,  deal- 
ing with  matters  of  which  no  one  else  has  any 
riorht  to  know.  But  there  is  another  kind  of 

o 

prayer  for  which  there  is  no  other  place  than 
the  great  congregation  ;  a  prayer  in  which 
many  pleading  hearts  unite  ;  in  which  the  sym- 
pathies and  hopes  and  aspirations  of  a  thou- 
sand worshipers  are  blended.  Such  a  prayer, 
if  some  one  can  give  it  voice,  is  something  far 


THE   SOCIAL  SIDE   OF  RELIGION       71 

hiffher  and  diviner  than  ever  ascended  from 
any  secret  shrine. 

It  is  true  that  the  prayer  of  the  great  assem- 
bly does  not  always  find  a  fitting  voice.  It  is 
sometimes  arid  and  formal ;  it  is  sometimes 
palpably  insincere  and  perfunctory,  alas  for 
our  human  disabilities  and  infirmities!  The 
power  of  the  leader  to  forget  himself,  to  gather 
up  into  his  heart  the  common  needs  of  those 
who  are  listening,  and  pour  them  out  before 
God,  is  sometimes  wanting.  Not  seldom  we 
may  find  ourselves  wishing  for  those  forms  of 
prayer,  sanctified  by  centuries  of  use,  in  which 
the  Christian  church,  in  all  the  lands  of  earth, 
has  made  known  its  requests  to  God.  These 
are  always  dignified  and  reverent ;  every  truly 
devout  heart  may  find  utterance  for  some  of 
its  deepest  needs  in  the  petitions  of  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer.  But  most  of  us  have  heard 
prayers  in  the  sanctuary  which  lifted  and  kin- 
dled us  as  no  written  prayers  could  ever  do. 
If  the  leader  of  the  devotions  could  be  "  in  the 
Spirit  on  the  Lord's  day ;  "  if  he  could  forget 
himself ;  if  the  simplicity  which  is  in  Christ 
could  take  possession  of  his  thought,  if  he 
could  look  over  the  company  round  about  him 
before  he  closed  his  eyes,  and  with  a  swift 


72      THE   CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

glance  could  glean  out  of  that  field  of  human 
experience  some  inkling  of  the  trials,  the  per- 
plexities, the  griefs,  the  struggles,  the  tragedies 
of  the  lives  there  before  him,  and  with  a  great, 
fervent,  energizing  ^  prayer  could  carry  them 
all  up  to  God,  there  would  be  something  in 
that  which  would  convince  all  who  were  listen- 
ing that  the  highest  form  of  prayer  is  not 
secret  prayer,  but  social  prayer.  Nor  is  it  an 
uncommon  thing  to  hear,  even  in  humble  pul- 
pits, prayer  which  effectually  meets  this  great 
demand. 

It  goes  without  saying  that,  for  the  highest 
forms  of  praise,  we  must  have  the  conspiring 
voices  of  the  great  congregation.  We  cannot 
let  loose  the  hallelujahs  in  the  closet ;  that 
would  be  almost  as  unseemly  as  to  pray  on  the 
street  corner.  If  the  Bible  is  any  guide  as  to 
the  forms  which  our  worship  should  take, 
praise  must  constitute  a  large  part  of  it.  And 
praise  is  mainly  a  social  act. 

Even  the  preaching  gathers  much  of  its  im- 
pressiveness  from  the  congregation.  The  mes- 
sage which  stirs  the  hearts  of  five  hundred 
worshipers  would  make  much  less  impression 
upon  any  one  of  them  if  he  heard  it  alone. 

^  James  v,  16. 


THE  SOCIAL  SIDE   OF  RELIGION       73 

It  could  not  be  given  to  him  alone,  as  it  is 
given  to  the  five  hundred;  that  is  a  psycho- 
logical impossibility.  There  is  something  in  it 
when  the  five  hundred  hear  it  that  is  not  in 
it  when  the  single  auditor  hears  it,  and  that 
something  is,  far  and  away,  the  best  tiling 
that  it  contains. 

All  these  considerations  show  that  public 
worship  is  essential  to  the  vigorous  mainte- 
nance of  true  religion.  The  elements  which  it 
supplies  to  religion  are  vital  elements.  Let  no 
man  imagine  that  by  reading  the  Bible  and 
good  books  at  home,  and  by  worshiping  in 
his  closet,  or,  as  some  are  fond  of  saying,  "  in 
God's  first  temples,"  the  life  of  religion  can 
be  successfully  maintained.  It  never  has  been 
maintained  in  that  way,  and  it  never  will  be. 
"When  men  forsake  the  assembling  of  them- 
selves together  for  worship,  there  is  no  more 
reading  the  Bible  and  good  books  at  home, 
and  no  more  praying  in  the  closet,  much  less  in 
the  woods.  Single  individuals  might,  if  the  reli- 
gious atmosphere  of  the  community  were  kept 
vital  round  about  them,  continue  to  enjoy  reli- 
gion. Invalids  are  often  forced  to  deprive  them- 
selves of  social  worship ;  but  if  they  are  there 
in  spirit,  something  of  the  benefit  finds  them. 


74  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

But  a  community  which  deliberately  abandoned 
social  worship  would  be  a  community  in  which 
no  private  worship  would  long  be  maintained. 

If,  then,  we  agree  that  religion  is  an  essen- 
tial element  in  the  life  of  mankind,  we  must 
see  that  it  is  necessary  that  some  institution 
should  exist  which  shall  make  provision  for 
social  and  public  worship.  The  Christian 
church  undertakes  primarily  to  fulfill  this 
function.  It  has  other  large  and  important 
relations  to  society,  of  which  we  shall  speak 
further  on.  But  this  is  its  first  concern.  I 
hope  that  it  has  been  made  evident  in  this 
discussion  that  it  is  a  very  important  func- 
tion. I  hope  that  those  who  read  these  pages 
may  be  able  to  see  that  if  we  are  to  have  any 
religion  in  our  land,  the  kind  of  work  which 
the  church  undertakes  to  do  cannot  be  neg- 
lected. That  the  church  is  not  doing  this 
work  as  well  as  it  ought  to  be  done  is  true 
enough ;  we  shall  have  all  that  before  us  pre- 
sently; but  the  vital  necessity  of  the  work  is 
not  therefore  disproved.  The  work  would  be 
better  done  if  those  who  now  hold  aloof,  be- 
cause they  see  its  defects,  would  put  their 
lives  into  the  business  of  mending  them. 

There  are  very  few  men  and  women,  after 


THE  SOCIAL  SIDE  OF  RELIGION       75 

all,  in  our  modern  society,  who  do  not  say, 
without  hesitation,  that  we  must  have  churches; 
that  it  would  not  do  to  let  them  die  ;  that  they 
are  essential  to  the  social  welfare;  that,  im- 
perfect as  they  are,  they  supply  a  need  which 
every  one  can  recognize.  They  have  no  hesi- 
tation, either,  in  admitting  that  if  there  are  to 
be  churches,  somebody  must  belong  to  them, 
and  share  the  responsibility  for  their  mainte- 
nance. But  when  the  question  is  asked,  "  If 
somebody  must,  why  must  not  you?"  a  good 
many  of  them  are  not  able  to  give  a  very  clear 
answer.  Very  often  the  excuse  that  is  set  up 
is  some  form  of  theological  dissent.  But  that 
is  not,  in  many  cases,  a  serious  barrier.  It 
might  shut  some  men  out  of  some  churches; 
but  there  are  great  varieties  of  creeds,  and  the 
conditions  of  membership  in  some  churches  are 
so  simple  that  no  really  earnest  man  is  likely 
to  feel  himself  excluded.  If  it  is  essential  that 
the  work  of  the  church  be  done,  and  if  the 
reader  of  these  pages  has  not  convinced  him- 
self that  he  is  exempt  from  the  common  human 
obligations,  then  he  can  find,  if  he  is  in  ear- 
nest, some  church  with  which  he  can  conscien- 
tiously ally  himself,  and  in  whose  work  he  can 
bear  a  part. 


IV 

THE   BUSINESS    OF   THE    CHURCH 

"We  have  seen  that  religion  is  a  social  fact; 
that  religious  feeling  creates  social  organiza- 
tions, and  is  preserved  and  promoted  by  them. 
God  is  love,  and  love  is  social  attraction ;  the 
children  of  God,  who  are  made  in  his  image, 
must  find  in  their  hearts  a  tendency  to  get 
together  and  worship  and  work  together. 

We  find  here  a  reciprocating  action.  An 
apple  seed  produces  a  tree  which  in  its  turn 
produces  apples  with  seeds.  So  the  religious 
impulse  organizes  the  church,  and  the  church 
cultivates  and  propagates  religious  impulses. 
The  point  to  be  emphasized  is  that  religion, 
and  especially  the  Christian  religion,  is  insepar- 
able from  social  forms ;  that  its  natural  result 
is  to  bring  human  beings  together  in  coopera- 
tive groups. 

It  is  the  business  of  life  to  organize  matter ; 
there  is  no  life  without  organization  ;  the  in- 
organic is  the  lifeless.  These  are  facts  which 
should  be  borne  in  mind  by  those  who  approve 


THE  BUSINESS   OF  THE   CHURCH       77 

of  the  religious  life  but  object  to  religious 
organizations.  If  religion  is  life,  it  will  create 
organic  forms. 

In  our  last  chapter  we  showed  how  worship, 
in  its  highest  expression,  is  essentially  social, 
and  how  impossible  it  would  be  to  maintain 
it  without  the  aid  of  institutions  havinof  the 

o 

same  essential  purpose  as  the  Christian  church. 
Let  us  turn  our  thought  now  to  the  other 
great  function  of  the  church,  the  regeneration 
of  human  society. 

Religion  cannot  be  kept  alive  without  alli- 
ance with  the  social  forces ;  the  social  forces 
cannot  be  kept  in  healthful  operation  without 
the  aid  of  religion.  Neither  blade  of  a  pair  of 
shears  will  cut  without  the  other.  You  cannot 
raise  corn  without  seed,  and  you  can  only  get 
seed  from  corn. 

Religion  is  not  an  ultimate  fact.  When  men 
are  religious  just  for  the  sake  of  being  reli- 
gious, their  religion  is  good  for  nothing.  Re- 
ligion is  for  character.  Its  end  is  gained  when 
it  has  made  us  good  men  and  women.  Reli- 
gion is  for  service.  It  finds  its  justification  in 
the  work  that  it  can  do  in  makino;  a  better 
world  of  this.  Jesus  gave  us  the  truth  about 
it  when  he  said,  *'  The  Sabbath  was  made  for 


78  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

man  and  not  man  for  the  Sabbath."  And  he 
carried  the  truth  forward  to  a  larger  appHca- 
tion  when  he  said,  "I  came  not  to  judge 
the  world,  but  to  save  the  world." 

"  To  save  the  world''  That  was  the  errand 
of  the  Christ ;  that  is  the  business  of  his 
church.  It  is  not  merely  to  save  a  certain 
number  of  people  out  of  the  world,  and  to  get 
them  safely  away  to  another  world ;  it  is  to 
save  the  world. 

There  is  no  danger  of  giving  to  this  phrase 
too  wide  an  application.  We  are  entitled  to 
the  expectation  that  this  salvation  is  to  have  a 
large  scope  ;  that  it  is  to  include  the  earth  and 
all  its  tribes  of  life.  When  we  speak  of  mak- 
ing a  better  world  of  this,  we  ought  to  mean 
the  physical  world  as  well  as  the  social  world 
and  the  moral  world.  It  is  a  true  insight  of 
faith  which  makes  the  poet  say :  — 

"  The  world  we  live  in  wholly  is  redeemed ; 
Not  man  alone,  but  all  that  man  holds  dear  : 
His  orchards  and  his  maize  :  forget  me  not 
And  heartsease  in  his  garden,  and  the  wild 
Aerial  blossoms  of  the  untamed  wood. 
That  make  its  savagery  so  homelike;    all 
Have  felt  Christ's  sweet  love  watering  their  roots  : 
His  sacrifice  has  won  both  earth  and  heaven. 
Nature  in  all  its  fullness  is  the  Lord's. 
There  are  no  Gentile  oaks,  no  Pagan  pines  ; 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  THE  CHURCH      79 

The  grass  beneath  our  feet  is  Christian  grass  ; 

The  wayside  weed  is  sacred  unto  him. 

Have  we  not  groaned  together,  herbs  and  men, 

Struggling  through  stifling  earth-weights  unto  light, 

Earnestly  longing  to  be  clothed  upon 

With  one  high  possibility  of  bloom  ? 

And  He,  He  is  the  Light,  He  is  the  Sun 

That  draws  us  out  of  darkness,  and  transmits 

The  noisome  earth-damp  into  Heaven's  own  breath, 

And  shapes  our  matted  roots,  we  know  not  how, 

Into  fresh  leaves,  and  strong,  fruit-bearing  stems  ; 

Yea,  makes  us  stand,  on  some  consummate  day, 

Abloom  in  white  transfiguration  robes." 

This  vital  sympathy  between  man  and  his 
environment  is  never  lost  sight  of  by  the  great 
prophets.  The  redemption  of  man  must  mean, 
as  they  clearly  see,  the  redemption  of  the 
world  in  which  man  lives.  When  the  drunk- 
ard is  reformed,  the  house  which  he  inhabits 
puts  on  a  new  face  and  there  are  flowers  in- 
stead of  weeds  in  his  garden.  Isaiah  knew 
that  when  his  people  were  redeemed  from 
their  captivity,  the  wilderness  and  the  parched 
land  would  be  glad  and  the  desert  would  re- 
joice and  blossom  as  the  rose. 

That  wonderful  passage  in  the  eighth  chapter 
of  the  Romans  shows  how  strongly  Paul  had 
grasped  the  old  prophetic  idea;  he  beholds 
the  whole  creation  humiliated  and  disfigured 
by  its  share  in  man's  degeneration,  and  waiting 


80  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

to  be  delivered  with  man  from  the  bondage  of 
corruption  into  the  liberty  of  the  glory  of  the 
children  of  God.  That  expectation  is  yet  to  be 
realized.  It  is  an  essential  part  of  the  Christ- 
ian expectation.  It  is  part  of  what  redemption 
means. 

True,  it  is  that  by  the  selfishness  and 
thoughtlessness  of  man  large  portions  of  the 
earth's  surface  have  been  despoiled ;  mountains 
have  been  denuded  of  their  forests;  fertile 
lands  have  been  worn  out,  and  fruitful  fields 
have  become  wildernesses.  But  we  are  begin- 
ning to  reverse  this  tendency,  and  now  many  a 
wilderness  is  being  reclaimed,  arid  plains  are 
green  with  corn,  and  the  forests  are  creep- 
ing back  upon  the  hillsides.  As  men  become 
socialized,  as  they  learn  to  cooperate  for  the 
common  good,  as  some  sense  of  their  social 
responsibility  gets  possession  of  their  minds, 
we  shall  see  this  process  extending ;  the  waste 
of  the  common  resources  of  the  earth  will 
cease ;  deserts  will  be  visited  by  the  life-giving 
water  ;  swamps  and  jungles  will  be  subdued  ; 
the  earth,  in  many  regions  now  uninhabited 
and  desolate,  will  be  made  to  bring  forth  and 
bud  that  it  may  give  seed  to  the  sower  and 
bread  to  the  eater. 


THE   BUSINESS   OF  THE  CHURCH       81 

All  this  is  the  natural  result  of  the  quicken- 
ing in  human  hearts  of  the  social  sentiments, 
by  which  they  are  drawn  into  closer  coopera- 
tion for  the  common  good ;  and  this  quicken- 
ing of  the  social  sentiments  is  the  work  that 
Christ  came  to  do,  and  the  work  that  his 
church  will  be  doing,  with  all  her  might,  as 
soon  as  she  fully  understands  what  is  her  busi- 
ness in  the  world. 

The  redemption  of  the  physical  order  will 
be  the  result  of  the  socialization  of  mankind. 
It  is  an  integral  part  of  the  work  that  Christ 
came  into  the  world  to  do.  It  is  part  of  what 
he  meant  when  he  said  that  he  came  to  save 
the  world.  When  we  realize  this,  we  get  some 
idea  of  the  scope  of  the  redemption  which  he 
proclaims.  It  is  not  a  superficial  or  a  senti- 
mental thing  that  he  proposes  ;  it  takes  hold 
of  life  with  the  most  comprehensive  grasp ;  it 
proposes  to  redeem  not  only  man  but  his  en- 
vironment. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  redemption  of  the 
physical  order  to  which  Christ  primarily  ad- 
dresses himself.  He  begins  in  the  spiritual 
realm.  He  begins  with  the  individual.  His 
first  concern  is  to  reveal  to  every  child  of 
God  the  great  fact  of  the  divine  Fatherhood, 


82  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

and  to  bring  him  into  filial  relations.  His 
whole  programme  for  humanity  rests  on  this 
simple  possibility  of  realizing  the  Fatherhood 
of  God.  If  this  can  be  realized,  everything 
else  will  follow.  If  any  man  is  in  the  right 
fihal  relations  with  his  Father  in  heaven,  he 
cannot  be  in  wrong  social  relations  with  his 
brother  on  the  earth.  If  he  is  in  harmony  with 
God  in  thought  and  feeling,  he  must  think 
God's  thoughts  about  his  neighbor,  and  the 
law  of  love  will  be  the  law  of  all  his  conduct. 
No  man  can  love  the  God  and  Father  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  with  heart  and  soul  and 
mind  without  loving  his  neighbor  as  himseH. 
Heartily  to  believe  what  Jesus  has  told  us 
about  the  Father,  and  fully  to  enter  into  fel- 
lowship with  him,  is  to  put  ourselves  into  such 
relations  with  our  fellow  men  that  every  duty 
we  owe  them  will  be  spontaneously  performed. 
In  a  society  composed  of  men  who  were  thus 
in  harmony  with  God  the  only  social  question 
for  each  man  would  be,  "  How  can  I  best  be- 
friend and  serve  my  neighbor  ?  " 

That  the  religion  of  Jesus  begins  here,  in 
the  heart  of  the  individual,  cannot  be  ques- 
tioned. And  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that 
there  can   be  no  sound   social   construction 


THE   BUSINESS  OF  THE  CHURCH       83 

which  does  not  build  on  this  foundation.  But 
it  is  well  to  remember  also  that  here,  as  every- 
where, a  foundation  calls  for  a  buildinf^,  and 
is  useless  and  unsightly  and  obstructive  with- 
out it.  The  foundation  of  Christianity  is  the 
reconciliation  of  individual  souls  to  God,  and 
the  establishment  of  friendship  between  these 
individual  souls  and  God ;  but  what  is  the 
structure  for  which  this  foundation  is  laid? 
It  is  the  establishment  of  the  same  divine 
friendship  among  men.  That  is  the  building 
for  which  the  foundation  calls.  If  the  build- 
ing does  not  go  up,  the  foundation  is  worthless. 
If  the  building  does  not  go  up,  the  foundation 
itself  will  crumble  and  decay.  The  only  way  to 
save  a  foundation  is  to  cover  it  with  a  building. 
Fault  might  be  found  with  the  figure,  but 
the  fact  which  it  imperfectly  illustrates  is  be- 
yond gainsaying.  The  right  relation  to  God, 
which  Jesus  always  makes  fundamental,  can- 
not be  maintained  except  as  it  issues  in  right 
relations  with  men.  Here  is  the  apostle  John's 
blunt  way  of  putting  it :  "  If  a  man  say,  I 
love  God,  and  liateth  his  brother,  he  is  a  liar ; 
for  he  that  loveth  not  his  brother  whom  he 
hath  seen,  cannot  love  God  whom  he  hath  not 
seen.    And  this  commandment  have  we  from 


84  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

him,  that  he  who  loveth  God  love  his  brother 
also." 

The  commandment  is,  in  fact,  only  the  state- 
ment of  a  logical  necessity.  How  could  any 
human  being  enter  into  a  loving  communion 
with  that  great  Friend  whose  love  is  always 
brooding  over  our  race,  who  is  seeking  to  do 
us  good  and  not  evil  all  the  days  of  our  lives, 
who  is  kind  even  to  the  unthankful  and  the 
evil,  —  and  not  be  a  lover  of  his  fellow  men 
and  a  servant  of  all  their  needs  ? 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  a  religion  which 
has  no  room  in  it  for  social  questions  cannot 
be  the  Christian  rehgion.  The  social  question 
is  the  one  question  which  Christianity  —  gen- 
uine Christianity  —  never  ceases  to  ask.  The 
first  thing  it  wishes  to  know  about  your  reli- 
gious experience  is,  how  it  affects  your  relations 
with  your  fellow  men.  It  insists  that  your  re- 
lations must  first  be  right  with  God,  but  in 
the  same  breath  it  declares  that  there  is  no 
way  of  knowing  whether  or  not  your  relations 
are  right  with  God  except  by  observing  how 
you  behave  among  your  fellow  men.  Faith  is 
the  root,  but  faith  without  works  is  dead,  be- 
ing alone  ;  and  works  concern  your  human 
relations. 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  THE  CHURCH       85 

These  principles  enable  us  to  determine 
what  is  the  business  of  the  church.  Its  busi- 
ness is  to  foster  and  propagate  Christianity, 
and  Christianity  exists  to  establish  in  this 
world  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  The  church 
is  not,  therefore,  an  end  in  itself ;  it  is  an  in- 
strument ;  it  is  a  means  employed  by  God  for 
the  promotion,  in  the  world,  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  not  an 
ecclesiastical  establishment ;  it  includes  the 
whole  of  life,  —  business,  politics,  art,  educa- 
tion, philanthropy,  society  in  the  narrow  sense, 
the  family :  when  all  these  shall  be  pervaded 
and  controlled  by  the  law  of  love,  then  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  will  have  fully  come.  And  the 
business  of  the  church  in  the  world  is  to  bring 
all  these  departments  of  life  under  Christ's  law 
of  love.  If  it  seeks  to  convert  men,  it  is  that 
they  may  be  filled  with  the  spirit  of  Christ 
and  may  govern  their  conduct  among  men  by 
Christ's  law.  If  it  gathers  them  together  for 
instruction  or  for  inspiration,  it  is  that  they 
may  be  taught  Christ's  way  of  life  and  sent  out 
into  the  world  to  live  as  he  lived  among  their 
fellow  men.  Its  function  is  to  fill  the  world 
with  the  knowledge  of  Christ,  the  love  of 
Christ,  the  life  of  Christ.  That  is  what  Christ 


86  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

meant  by  saving  the  world.  The  world  is  saved 
when  this  is  true  of  it,  and  it  is  never  saved 
till  then.  The  work  of  the  church  is  success- 
ful just  to  the  extent  to  which  it  succeeds  in 
Christianizing  the  social  order  in  the  midst  of 
which  it  stands. 

"  If  by  means  of  its  ministrations,  the  com- 
munity round  about  the  church  is  steadily 
becoming  more  Christian;  if  kindness,  sym- 
pathy, purity,  justice,  good-will,  are  increasing 
in  their  power  over  the  lives  of  men;  if  busi- 
ness methods  are  becoming  less  rapacious;  if 
employers  and  employed  are  more  and  more 
inclined  to  be  friends  rather  than  foes;  if  poli- 
ticians are  growing  conscientious  and  unselfish; 
if  the  enemies  of  society  are  in  retreat  before 
the  forces  of  decency  and  order;  if  amuse- 
ments are  becoming  purer  and  more  rational; 
if  polite  society  is  getting  to  be  simpler  in  its 
tastes  and  less  ostentatious  in  its  manners  and 
less  extravagant  in  its  expenditures;  if  poverty 
and  crime  are  diminishing;  if  parents  are  be- 
coming more  wise  and  firm  in  the  administra- 
tion of  their  sacred  trust,  and  children  more 
loyal  and  affectionate  to  their  parents, — if 
such  fruits  as  these  are  visible  on  every  side, 
then  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  church 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  THE  CHURCH      87 

knows  its  business  and  is  prosecuting  it  with 
efficiency.  If  none  of  these  effects  are  seen  in 
the  life  of  the  community,  the  evidence  is  clear 
that  the  church  is  neglecting  its  business,  and 
that  failure  must  be  written  across  its  record. 

Even  though  it  be  true  that  large  numbers 
are  added  to  its  membership,  that  its  congre- 
gations are  crowded,  its  revenues  abundant, 
its  missionary  contributions  liberal,  and  its 
social  prestige  high ;  yet  if  the  standards  of 
social  morality  in  its  neighborhood  are  sink- 
ing rather  than  rising,  and  the  general  social 
drift  and  tendency  is  toward  animalism  and 
greed  and  luxury  and  strife,  the  church  must 
be  pronounced  a  failure :  nay,  even  if  it  be 
believed  that  the  church  is  succeeding  in 
getting  a  great  many  people  safely  to  heaven 
■when  they  die;  yet  if  the  social  tendencies  in 
the  world  about  it  are  all  downward,  its  work, 
on  the  whole,  must  be  regarded  as  a  failure. 
Its  main  business  is  not  saving  people  out  of 
the  world,  it  is  saving  the  world.  When  it  is 
evident  that  the  world,  under  its  ministration, 
is  growing  no  better  but  rather  worse,  no 
matter  what  other  good  things  it  may  have 
the  credit  of  doing,  the  verdict  is  against  it. 

This  judgment  rests,  of  course,  against  the 


88  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

collective  church  of  the  community  or  the 
nation,  rather  than  against  any  local  congre- 
gation. It  may  be  that  there  are  a  hundred 
churches  in  a  city,  and  that  ten  of  them  are 
working  efficiently  to  leaven  society  with 
Christian  ideas  and  principles,  while  the  other 
ninety  are  content  to  fill  up  their  membership 
lists  and  furnish  the  consolations  of  religion 
to  the  people  who  make  up  their  congregations. 
The  church  of  that  city  would  probably  be  a 
failure,  but  the  ten  congregations  which  had 
accepted  Christ's  idea  of  the  church  and  were 
striving  to  realize  it  could  not  be  charged  with 
the  failure.  They  would  have  done  what  they 
could  to  prevent  it.  If  the  rest  had  been 
working  in  the  same  way,  the  results  would 
have  been  different. 

The  point  on  which  attention  must  be  fixed 
is  simply  this,  that  the  test  of  the  efficiency 
of  the  church  must  be  found  in  the  social  con- 
ditions of  the  community  to  which  it  minis- 
ters. Its  business  is  to  Christianize  that  com- 
munity. There  is  no  question  but  that  the 
resources  are  placed  within  its  reach  by  which 
this  business  may  be  done.  If  it  is  done,  the 
church  may  hope  to  hear  the  commendation, 
"  Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant !  "  If 


THE  BUSINESS  OF  THE  CHURCH      89 

it  is  not  done,  no  matter  how  many  other 
gains  are  made,  the  church  must  expect  the 
condemnation  of  its  Master. 

It  must  not  be  gathered  from  this  argument 
that  the  church  in  modern  life  is  a  failure. 
There  may  be  discouraging  signs,  reasons  for 
solicitude ;  but  it  may  appear,  after  all,  that 
the  signs  are  on  the  whole  encouraging.  We 
are  not  maintaining  that  the  social  tendencies 
in  modern  society  are  all  downward ;  far  from 
it.  We  are  simply  pointing  out  that  it  is  only 
by  observing  these  tendencies  that  we  can 
judge  whether  or  not  the  church  is  fulfilling 
its  mission. 

It  is  greatly  to  be  feared,  however,  that 
many  of  the  churches  of  the  present  day  fail 
to  apply  this  test  to  themselves.  Their  social 
responsibility  is  by  no  means  so  clear  to  them 
as  it  ought  to  be.  Indeed,  there  are  not  a  few 
among  them  that  spurn  it  altogether,  declar- 
ing that  their  business  is  to  save  souls ;  that 
the  condition  of  the  social  order  is  no  concern 
of  theirs. 

There  is  some  reason  to  believe  that  phrases 
of  this  kind  are  often  used  without  due  con- 
sideration of  their  meaning.  What  is  meant 
by  the  saving  of  a  soul?  Is  not  the  one  sin 


90  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

from  "which  souls  need  to  be  saved  the  sin  of 
selfishness?  Is  not  the  death  that  threatens 
the  souls  of  men,  from  which  we  seek  to  res- 
cue them,  simply  the  result  of  the  violation  of 
Christ's  law  of  love  ?  What  is  salvation  but 
bringing  them  back  to  obedience  of  this  law  ? 
And  this  law  finds  expression  in  the  social 
order  —  can  find  expression  nowhere  else.  It  is 
the  law  of  our  social  relations.  What  possible 
evidence  can  you  have  that  a  soul  is  saved 
until  you  see  it  entering  into  social  relations 
and  behaving  properly  in  them  ? 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  tliese  very  simple 
truths  are  not  always  so  well  understood  as 
they  should  be.  There  is  a  notion  that  salva- 
tion is  something  metaphysical,  or  legal,  or 
sentimental ;  that  it  consists  in  the  belief  of 
certain  propositions  or  the  experience  of  cer- 
tain emotions.  But  all  this  is  delusive  and 
puerile.  If  it  is  with  the  heart  that  man  be- 
lieveth,  he  "  beHeveth  unto  righteousness  ;  " 
that  is  the  destination  of  his  faith  ;  and  unless 
his  faith  goes  that  way  and  reaches  that  goal, 
there  is  no  salvation  in  it.  Righteousness  is 
the  result  of  saving  faith  ;  and  "  he  that  doeth 
righteousness  is  righteous"  —  none  else. 
Righteousness  is  right  relations — first  with 


THE   BUSINESS   OF   THE  CHURCH      91 

God,  and  then  with  men.  And  no  man  can 
have  any  evidence  that  he  is  in  right  relations 
with  God  except  as  he  finds  himself  in  right 
relations  with  men. 

The  message  of  Christianity,  we  often  hear 
it  said,  is  to  the  individual.  Yes,  it  is;  and 
what  is  the  message  of  Christianity  to  the  in- 
dividual ?  The  first  thing  that  it  tells  him  is 
that  he  is  not,  in  strictness,  an  individual,  any 
more  than  a  hand  or  a  foot  or  an  eye  or  an 
ear  is  an  individual ;  that  he  is  a  member  of 
a  body ;  that  he  derives  all  that  is  highest 
and  most  essential  in  his  life  from  the  life  of 
humanity,  to  which  he  is  vitally  and  organi- 
cally related;  that  no  man  Hveth  to  himself; 
that  his  good  is  not,  and  can  never  be,  an  ex- 
clusive personal  good,  —  that  it  is  in  what  he 
shares  with  all  the  rest.  The  doom  from  which 
Christianity  seeks  to  save  the  individual  is 
the  doom  of  moral  individualism ;  the  blessed- 
ness into  which  it  seeks  to  lead  him  is  the 
blessedness  of  love. 

Thus  it  appears  that  even  these  cant  phrases 
by  which  the  church  sometimes  tries  to  fence 
itself  off  from  the  world  into  a  pietistic  re- 
ligiousness that  has  little  or  nothing  to  do 
with  life,  all  point,  when  you  get  their  real 


92  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

significance,  to  a  relation  between  the  church 
and  the  social  order  so  close  and  vital  that 
any  attempt  to  sever  the  bond  must  be  fatal 
to  the  life  of  both.  The  church  is  in  the 
world  to  save  the  world;  that  is  its  business; 
and  it  can  never  know  whether  it  is  succeed- 
ing in  its  business  unless  it  keeps  a  vigilant 
eye  on  all  that  is  going  on  in  the  world,  and 
shapes  its  activities  to  secure  in  the  world  right 
social  relations  among  men. 

In  what  manner  the  church  is  to  carry  for- 
ward this  work  of  Christianizing  society  is 
a  practical  question  calling  for  great  wisdom. 
It  may  not  be  needful  that  the  church  should 
undertake  to  organize  the  industrial  or  politi- 
cal or  domestic  or  philanthropic  machinery  of 
society.  Its  business  is  not,  ordinarily,  to  con- 
struct social  machinery ;  its  business  is  to  fur- 
nish social  motive  power.  It  is  the  dynamic 
of  society  for  which  it  is  responsible.  But  the 
dynamic  which  it  furnishes  must  be  a  dy- 
namic which  will  create  the  machinery.  Life 
makes  its  own  forms.  And  the  church  must 
fill  society  with  a  kind  of  life  which  will  pro- 
duce such  forms  of  cooperation  as  shall  secure 
the  prevalence  of  justice  and  friendship,  of 
peace  and  good- will  among  men.  It  may  not 


THE   BUSINESS   OF  THE   CHURCH      93 

be  required  to  look  after  details,  but  it  must 
make  sure  of  the  results.  If  the  results  are 
secured,  if  society  is  Christianized,  if  the  social 
order  is  producing  a  better  breed  of  men,  if 
the  business  of  the  world  goes  on  more  and 
more  smoothly,  and  all  things  are  working  to- 
gether to  increase  the  sum  of  human  welfare, 
then  the  church  may  be  sure  that  the  life 
■which  she  is  contributing  to  the  vitalization 
of  society  is  the  life  that  is  life  indeed.  But 
if  the  social  tendencies  are  all  in  the  other 
direction,  then  she  should  awaken  to  the  fact 
that  the  light  that  is  in  her  must  be  darkness, 
and  that  the  responsibility  for  this  failure  lies 
at  her  doors. 

It  is  the  recognition  and  acceptance  of  this 
responsibihty  for  which  we  are  pleading.  That 
the  church,  in  all  the  ages,  has  very  imper- 
fectly comprehended  this  responsibility  is  a 
lamentable  fact.  What  the  social  aims  of  Jesus 
himself  were,  most  of  us  can  fairly  understand. 
The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  indicates  to  us  the 
kind  of  society  which  he  expected  to  see  es- 
tablished on  the  earth.  He  never  defined  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  which  he  bade  us  seek 
first,  but  he  described  it  in  so  many  ways  that 
we  know  very  well  what  manner  of  society  it 


94   THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

would  be.  But  the  church  which  has  called 
itself  by  his  name  has  but  feebly  grasped  the 
truth  he  taught.  As  a  late  writer  has  said : 
^^  As  soon  as  the  thoughts  of  a  great  spiritual 
leader  pass  to  others  and  form  the  animating 
principle  of  a  party,  or  school,  or  sect,  there  is 
an  inevitable  drop.  The  disciples  cannot  keep 
pace  with  the  sweep  of  the  Master.  They  flut- 
ter where  he  soared.  They  coarsen  and  ma- 
teriahze  his  dreams.  .  .  .  This  is  the  tragedy 
of  all  who  lead.  The  farther  they  are  in 
advance  of  their  times,  the  more  they  will  be 
misunderstood  and  misrepresented  by  the  very 
men  who  swear  by  their  name  and  strive  to 
enforce  their  ideas  and  aims.  If  the  followers 
of  Jesus  had  preserved  his  thought  and  spirit 
without  leakage,  evaporation,  or  adulteration, 
it  would  be  a  fact  unique  in  history."  ^ 

That  his  disciples  held  fast  so  many  of  the 
ideas  and  impulses  he  imparted  to  them,  and 
that  they  have  been  turned  to  so  large  account 
in  the  reconstruction  of  the  social  order,  is 
matter  for  profound  thankfulness.  But  much 
of  this  has  been  indirectly  wrought ;  the  Christ- 
ian elements  which  appear  in  the  industrial 

^  Rauscheubusch:    Christianity  and   the  Social  Crisis,  pp. 
93,  94. 


THE   BUSINESS  OF  THE  CHURCH      95 

order  of  to-day  are  largely  of  the  nature  of 
by-products.  It  can  hardly  be  said  that  the 
church  of  Jesus  Christ  has  ever,  in  any  age, 
consciously  and  clearly  set  before  herself  the 
business  which  he  committed  to  her  hands. 
She  has  always  been  putting  the  emphasis 
somewhere  else  than  where  he  put  it;  she  has 
always  been  doing  something  else  instead  of 
the  great  task  which  he  began  and  left  her  to 
finish.  It  is  the  great  failure  of  history  —  the 
turning:  aside  of  the  Christian  church  from  the 
work  of  Christianizing  the  social  order,  and 
the  expenditure  of  her  energies,  for  nineteen 
centuries,  on  other  pursuits. 

The  writer  from  whom  I  quoted  devotes  a 
very  interesting  chapter  to  the  reasons  why 
the  church  has  never  attempted  the  work  of 
social  reconstruction.  He  shows  that  it  would 
have  been  almost  impossible  in  the  early 
Christian  centuries  for  the  Christians  to  have 
undertaken  any  work  of  social  reform ;  if,  un- 
der the  rigors  of  the  Roman  despotism,  they 
had  meddled  with  politics,  they  would  have  lost 
their  heads.  Then  they  began  to  look  for  a 
miraculous  return  of  Jesus  to  set  up  his  king- 
dom in  the  world,  and  they  waited  for  him  to 
reconstruct  the  social  order.  That  expectation 


96     THE  CHURCH   AND  MODERN   LIFE 

held  them  for  a  thousand  years.  When  it 
failed,  they  turned  their  thoughts  to  heaven, 
and  "as  the  eternal  life  came  to  the  front  in 
Christian  hope  the  kingdom  of  God  receded  to 
the  background,  and  with  it  went  much  of  the 
social  potency  of  Christianity.  The  kingdom 
of  God  was  a  social  and  collective  hope,  and 
it  was  for  this  earth.  The  eternal  life  was  an 
individualistic  hope,  and  it  was  not  for  this 
earth.  The  kingdom  of  God  involved  the 
social  transformation  of  humanity.  The  hope 
of  eternal  life,  as  it  was  then  held,  was  the 
desire  to  escape  from  this  world  and  he  done 
with  it."  And  this  led  to  the  ascetic  tendency, 
which  made  men  think  this  world  not  worth 
mending.  Then  came  in  the  paganizing  influ- 
ences of  the  Middle  Ages,  which  made  ritual 
the  supreme  thing  and  paralyzed  the  ethical 
motive;  and  then  followed  the  controversies 
about  dogma,  which  deadened  the  life  of  the 
church,  until  finally  the  great  ecclesiasticism 
was  developed,  and  the  church,  instead  of 
being  the  instrument  for  the  Christianization 
of  the  world,  became  an  empire  in  itself,  se23a- 
rate  from  the  world,  arrogating  to  itself  all 
the  honors  and  powers  of  the  kingdom  of 
God.    "By  that  substitution,"  says  Professor 


THE   BUSINESS   OF  THE   CHURCH       97 

Rauschenbusch,  "  the  church  could  claim  all 
service  and  absorb  all  social  energies.  It  has 
often  been  said  that  the  church  interposed 
between  man  and  God.  It  also  interposed  be- 
tween man  and  humanity.  It  magnified  what 
he  did  for  the  church  and  belittled  what  he 
did  for  humanity.  It  made  its  own  organiza- 
tion the  chief  object  of  social  service."  ^ 

This  is  only  a  hint  of  the  process  by  which 
the  church  has  been  deflected  from  its  course, 
and  hindered  from  undertaking,  with  con- 
scious puqDOse  and  consecrated  power,  her 
own  proper  work.  She  has  done  many  other 
things,  some  beautiful  and  excellent  things, 
but  the  one  thing  she  was  sent  to  do  she  has 
not  done. 

It  is  only  in  our  own  time  that  she  has 
beo-un  to  get  hold  of  the  true  conception  of 
her  business  in  the  world.  That  the  church  is 
here  to  seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  his 
righteousness,  to  concentrate  her  energies  upon 
realizing  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  world, 
now  begins  to  be  evident  to  men  of  insight ; 
and  there  is  a  loud  call  upon  her  to  bestir  her- 
self and  take  up  this  work  so  long  neglected, 
and  give  to  it  all  her  energies.    That  is  the 

1  rage  182. 


98  THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

meaning  of  the  cry,  "  Back  to  Christ,"  which 
we  are  hearing  in  this  generation.  It  means 
that  the  church  needs  to  get  into  sympathy 
with  its  Leader  and  Lord,  to  try  to  understand 
his  social  aims,  and  to  understand  what  he 
meant  when  he  bade  us  seek  first  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  his  righteousness. 

Two  or  three  practical  suggestions  may  be 
ventured  here  to  those  who  have  followed  this 
argument. 

We  have  seen  that,  since  religion  is  a  per- 
manent need  of  human  nature,  and  since  the 
church  is  indispensable  to  the  maintenance  of 
religion,  it  becomes  the  duty  of  good  men  and 
women  to  ally  themselves  with  the  church  and 
help  to  make  it  efficient.  But  there  are  churches 
and  churches.  We  cannot  help  noting,  as  we 
look  over  the  community,  some  churches  which 
at  least  dimly  understand  their  business,  and 
some  which  obviously  do  not. 

Some  of  us  may  be  connected  by  birth  or 
confession  with  churches  that  do  comprehend 
their  true  function.  If  so,  let  us  rejoice  in  that 
fact,  and  give  our  strength  to  the  support  of 
such  churches  in  their  work.  It  is,  far  and 
away,  the  most  important  work  that  is  being 
done  in  the  world  at  the  present  day.  If  we 


THE   BUSINESS   OF  THE   CHURCH      99 

can  have  part  in  it,  we  ought  to  rejoice  in  that 
privilege. 

We  may  be  connected  with  churches  which 
do  not  understand  their  business.  Possibly  we 
may  think  that  the  best  thing  for  us  to  do  is 
to  come  out  of  them,  and  seek  fellowship  with 
churches  more  enlightened.  Let  us  think  two 
or  three  times  before  we  decide  upon  this. 
Perhaps  the  best  thing  we  can  do  is  to  stay 
where  we  are  and  use  our  best  endeavors, 
modestly  and  patiently,  to  bring  our  own 
church  to  a  realization  of  its  responsibilities. 

We  may  not  be  identified  with  any  church. 
If  we  are  not,  then  it  is  clearly  the  part  of 
wisdom  for  each  one  to  find  the  church  which 
seems  to  him  to  understand  its  business  best, 
and  to  give  the  strength  of  his  life  to  making 
its  life  vigorous  and  its  work  efficient. 


IS   THE    CHURCH   DECADENT  / 

The  assertion  is  often  made  that  the  church 
is  an  effete  institution  ;  that  its  usefulness  is 
past ;  that  it  is  sinking  into  innocuous  desue- 
tude. That  assertion  has  been  current  for  a 
thousand  years  —  perhaps  longer  ;  there  have 
been  many  periods  in  which  it  was  urged  much 
more  confidently  than  it  is  to-day.  This  fact 
would  suggest  caution  in  pressing  such  a 
judgment.  Wise  physicians  do  not  hastily  pro- 
nounce the  word  of  doom.  They  have  seen 
too  many  patients  return  from  the  gates  of 
death.  Men  and  women  who,  in  their  younger 
days,  appear  to  have  a  slender  hold  on  life, 
often  reach  a  vigorous  old  age.  The  same 
thing  is  true  of  institutions.  It  is  not  prudent 
to  assume  that  because  they  are  ailing  they 
are  moribund. 

The  Christian  church,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
far  from  being  in  perfect  spiritual  condition. 
Some  of  her  symptoms  are  disquieting.  But 
even  as  we  often    have   good  hope  for  our 


IS  THE  CHURCH   DECADENT?        101 

friends  when  their  health  is  impaired,  and 
find  that  there  are  good  reasons  for  our  hope, 
so  we  need  not  despair  of  the  recovery  of  the 
church  from  the  morbid  conditions  which  we 
acknowledge  and  deplore.  That  the  patient 
has  a  good  constitution  and  surprising  vitality 
is  indicated  by  the  experience  of  nineteen  cen- 
turies. More  than  once,  through  this  long 
lifetime,  she  has  been  in  a  worse  way  than  she 
is  to-day,  but  she  has  rallied,  and  returned  to 
her  work  with  new  vigor. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century 
her  case  seemed  to  be  desperate ;  but  heroic 
remedies  were  used,  and  while  the  cure  was  far 
from  complete,  and  did  not  reach  the  root  of 
the  malady,  there  was  at  least  a  partial  recovery. 
In  England  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  in  America  at  the  end  of  the  same 
century,  the  symptoms  were  alarming  ;  but  she 
lived  through  those  critical  periods,  and  has 
done  better  work  since  than  ever  before. 

That  the  work  of  the  church  has  been  sadly 
misdirected ;  that  she  has  often  put  the  em- 
phasis in  the  wrong  place ;  that  while  she  has 
been  doing  many  things  that  were  worth  doing 
she  has  largely  left  undone  the  main  thing 
she  was  sent  to  do,  was  made  plain  by  our 


102    THE  CHURCH  AND   MODERN  LIFE 

study  in  the  last  chapter.  And  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  this  misdirection  of  her  energies, 
and  this  failure  to  exercise  her  strenpfth  in 
normal  ways,  have  resulted  in  many  morbid 
conditions,  some  of  which  she  has  partly  over- 
come, but  from  some  of  which  she  is  still  suf- 
fering. 

With  the  disorders  from  which  the  church 
has  suffered  in  past  generations  we  need  not 
now  concern  ourselves.  But  the  weaknesses 
and  ailments  of  the  present  time  demand  our 
attention.  We  must  know  what  they  are  that 
we  may  help  to  cure  them.  That  responsibility 
rests  upon  us  all.  If  the  church  is  to  be  made 
whole,  it  must  be  by  the  intelligent  and  nor- 
mal action  of  the  men  and  women  who  are 
members  of  the  church.  We  must  know,  to 
begin  with,  what  health  is,  and  what  is  dis- 
ease ;  we  must  have  some  clear  idea  of  what 
would  be  the  normal  condition  of  Christian 
society. 

Men  sometimes  mistake  conditions  of  dis- 
ease for  conditions  of  health.  In  cases  of  ner- 
vous breakdown,  patients  are  often  spurred 
on,  by  the  malady  itself,  to  work  when  they 
ought  to  rest.  The  less  able  to  work  they  are, 
the  harder  they  work.  They  do  not  know  that 


IS  THE  CHURCH   DECADENT?        103 

this  restless  activity  is  a  sign  of  disease,  they 
think  it  is  proof  of  abouudinc^  vitality.  And 
there  are  many  ways  in  which  morbid  condi- 
tions tend  to  propagate  themselves.  The  in- 
stinctive impulses  of  an  invalid  are  not  safe 
guides.  Yet  there  are  many  cases  in  which, 
even  if  the  man  is  not  his  own  medical  ad- 
viser, he  must  have  an  intelligent  idea  of  what 
ails  him,  in  order  that  he  may  be  able  to  fol- 
low medical  advice,  and  adopt  the  regimen 
which  leads  to  health.  His  reason  must  be 
summoned  to  discern  and  resist  his  morbid 
impulses,  and  keep  himself  in  the  ways  of  life. 
Equally  true  is  it  that  if  the  church,  which 
is  the  body  of  Christ,  is  out  of  health,  the 
men  and  women  who  are  the  members  of  that 
body  must  know  what  ails  them,  and  how  to 
supply  the  remedy.  And  when  they  summon 
their  reason  and  seek  to  have  it  divinely  en- 
lightened, they  are  likely  to  discover  that  many 
of  their  worst  disorders  are  conditions  which 
they  have  been  cherishing ;  that  some  of  the 
things  they  have  been  most  proud  of  are  ills 
that  they  must  pray  and  work  to  be  rid  of. 

1.  The  first  and  the  worst  of  the  church's 
infirmities  is  unbelief.  In  one  of  the  moments 


104    THE   CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

of  vision,  when  the  long  obscuration  of  his 
light  in  the  future  centuries  was  revealed  to 
him,  Jesus  sadly  wondered  whether,  when  the 
Son  of  Man  came,  he  would  find  faith  on  the 
earth.  The  pathetic  query  has  always  been 
pertinent.  Faith  is  the  vital  force  of  Christ- 
ianity, and  the  weakening  of  that  vital  force 
is  the  prime  cause  of  all  its  disorders. 

The  unbelief  which  brings  enfeeblement 
and  decay  to  the  church  of  Christ  is  not,  how- 
ever, the  kind  of  unbelief  which  the  church  is 
most  apt  to  reprove. 

There  is,  doubtless,  in  the  church  of  to-day 
some  weakening  of  faith  in  the  historical  facts 
of  the  Christian  religion,  and  in  the  central 
doctrines  of  the  Christian  creed.  Science  and 
criticism  have  rendered  incredible  some  state- 
ments which  once  were  universally  accepted. 
Considerable  revision  of  theological  belief  has 
been  found  necessary,  and  it  is  probable  that 
in  this  process  the  hold  of  some  upon  the  cen- 
tral verities  has  been  relaxed. 

It  may  even  be  that  the  theories  of  some 
Christian  confessors  respecting  the  person  of 
Christ  have  been  modified,  so  that  his  human- 
ity is  more  strongly  affirmed  than  once  it 
was.    To  some  persons  this  change  of  empha- 


IS  THE  CHURCH   DECADENT?        105 

sis  may  seem  to  be  a  serious  form  of  unbe- 
lief. 

Admitting  all  this,  however,  these  intellect- 
ual changes  are  not  the  principal  cause  of  the 
enfeeblement  of  the  church.  These  changes, 
however  we  may  regard  them,  have  affected 
but  a  small  minority  of  the  members  of  our 
churches ;  the  great  majority  of  them  con- 
tinue to  hold  substantially  the  same  theologi- 
cal opinions  that  they  have  always  held.  The 
trouble  with  the  church  is  not  chiefly  a  lack 
of  faith  in  the  creeds,  it  is  a  lack  of  faith  in 
Christ.  And  it  is  not  a  lack  of  faith  in  the 
metaphysical  theories  of  Christ's  person,  but 
a  lack  of  faith  in  the  truth  of  his  teaching. 
It  is  an  unbelief  in  which  the  most  orthodox 
people  are  quite  as  much  involved  as  those 
who  are  considered  heretics. 

The  central  question  is  not,  after  all,  what 
we  think  about  the  nature  of  Christ.  There  is 
good  reason  to  believe  that  none  of  the  twelve 
apostles  held,  during  the  life  of  our  Lord,  opin- 
ions which  would  be  regarded  as  orthodox 
concerning  his  person.  They  believed  that  he 
was  a  great  Prophet,  a  revealer  of  God ;  nay, 
they  believed  that  he  was  the  Messiah,  the  long 
promised  King,  who  was  to  set  up  his  kingdom 


106    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

in  this  world.  0£  this  they  had  no  doubt.  This 
was  the  belief  that  Jesus  himself  sought  to 
fasten  in  their  minds;  and  when  he  had  drawn 
from  Simon  Peter  a  confession  of  this  faith  he 
cried  out,  "Blessed  art  thou,  Simon  son  of 
John ;  for  flesh  and  blood  hath  not  revealed  it 
unto  thee,  but  my  Father  which  is  in  heaven." 
It  was  this  faith  in  him  as  Lord  and  Ruler  of 
men,  as  the  Founder  in  this  world  of  a  king- 
dom of  righteousness  and  peace,  on  which,  as 
he  declared,  his  church  should  be  builded. 
Such  faith  as  this  these  twelve  men  had.  They 
would  have  found  it  difficult,  probably,  to 
assent  to  the  Nicene  Creed  or  the  Athanasian 
Creed  ;  but  they  believed  in  Jesus  as  Lord  and 
King,  and  they  believed  every  word  of  his 
Magna  Charta  found  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount ;  and  they  were  ready  to  do  what  they 
could  to  establish  that  kingdom  in  this  world. 
It  is  just  here  that  the  faith  of  the  church 
is  lacking.  It  believes  the  Nicene  Creed,  but 
it  does  not  believe  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
It  believes  what  men  have  said  about  Christ ;  it 
does  not  believe  what  Christ  himself  said.  It 
does  not  accept  the  practical  rule  of  life  which 
he  has  laid  down.  It  does  not  believe  that  the 
Golden  Rule  is  workable  in  modern  life.    It 


IS  THE   CHURCH   DECADENT?        107 

does  not  believe  that  it  is  feasible  to  love  our 
neighbors  as  ourselves.  It  does  not  believe  in 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  as  a  present  possibility. 
It  expects  that  Christ  will  come,  by  and  by,  in 
person,  with  miraculous  power,  to  revolution- 
ize society,  and  that  after  that  it  will  be  prac- 
ticable to  follow  the  law  of  love,  in  all  our 
human  relations;  but,  for  the  present,  we 
must  let  the  law  of  competition  control  all  our 
practical  affairs. 

Of  course  it  is  not  often  that  the  teachings 
of  Christ  are  directly  controverted  ;  they  are 
generally  ignored,  or  passed  by,  as  "counsels 
of  perfection  "  which  we  are  to  admire  rather 
than  obey.  But  we  sometimes  find  arguments 
in  which  disbelief  in  the  teachings  of  Jesus  is 
distinctly  justified.  In  a  late  volume,  one  of 
the  great  leaders  of  the  German  church  elabo- 
rately contends  that  we  cannot  follow  Jesus 
in  his  social  teachings.  "  Our  attitude  toward 
the  world,"  says  Herrmann,  "  cannot  be  that 
of  Jesus;  even  the  purpose  to  will  that  it 
should  be  so  is  stifled  in  the  air  that  we  breathe 
to-day.  The  state  of  affairs  is  very  clearly 
described  by  Naiunann,  who  says  with  truth  : 
'  Therefore  we  do  not  seek  Jesus'  ad\ace  on 
points  connected  with  the  management  of  the 


108     THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

state  and  political  economy.'  But  -when  he 
goes  on  to  say  :  *  I  give  my  vote  and  I  canvass 
for  the  fleet,  not  because  I  am  a  Christian,  but 
because  I  am  a  citizen,  and  because  I  have 
learned  to  renounce  all  hope  of  finding  funda- 
mental questions  of  state  determined  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,'  we  can  detect  a  fallacy. 
He  regards  as  painful  renunciation  what  ought, 
on  the  part  of  the  Christian,  to  be  a  free,  de- 
cisive, and  voluntary  act."  ^ 

Naumann  repudiates,  rather  regretfully,  the 
counsels  of  Jesus  about  economic  and  civil  af- 
fairs, but  Herrmann  says  that  he  does  it  light- 
heartedly,  because  he  has  found  out  that  these 
counsels  are  not  applicable  to  existing  condi- 
tions. 

It  is  evident  that  these  counsels  must  be 
rationally  applied,  —  the  spirit  and  not  the 
letter  of  them  is  the  essential  thing ;  but  what 
these  teachers  mean  is  more  than  this.  How 
far  they  have  departed  from  the  spirit  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  indicated  by  the 
words  already  quoted.  The  reason  why  Nau- 
mann does  not  seek  the  advice  of  Jesus  in 
questions  of  public  concern  is  that  he  is  de- 

1  The  Social  Gospel,  Harnack  and  Herrmann,  pp.  216, 
217. 


IS  THE   CHURCH   DECADENT?        109 

termined  to  give  his  vote  and  influence  for 
the  German  fleet ;  and  Herrmann  is  following 
the  same  impulse  when  he  characterizes  the 
call  for  the  disarmament  of  the  nations  as  a 
"  noble  folly."  It  is  evident  that  the  reason 
why  these  teachers  feel  that  the  way  of  Jesus  is 
impracticable  is  that  they  are  fully  committed 
to  the  ideas  of  German  imperialism.  To  con- 
ceive that  nations  could  dispense  with  war  is 
a  "  noble  folly."  And,  for  the  same  reason, 
they  conceive  that  any  attempt  to  substitute 
cooperation  for  competition  in  the  industrial 
world  would  be  disastrous  to  modern  society. 
The  morality  of  strife  outranks,  in  their  judg- 
ment, the  morahty  of  service  and  sacrifice. 
The  law  of  Jesus  may  be  permitted  to  hold 
some  subordinate  place ;  it  will  be  found  use- 
ful in  mitigating  the  savagery  of  strife  ;  but 
as  the  regulative  principle  of  the  industrial 
order  it  is  not  to  be  considered. 

The  attempt  of  these  German  theologians 
to  frame  a  philosophical  refutation  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  gives  us  something  of 
a  shock;  but,  practically,  this  has  been  the 
attitude  of  the  church  in  all  the  generations. 
The  hopeful  sign  is  that  it  does  now  give  us 
a  shock  to  have  the  doctrine  badly  stated. 


110    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

Through  a  large  part  of  the  Christian  era 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  with  respect  to  strife 
has  been  flouted  by  the  church.  The  bitterest 
and  most  wasteful  wars  have  been  religious 
wars.  The  disciples  of  the  Prince  of  Peace  saw 
no  incongruity  in  the  settlement  by  the  sword 
of  such  questions  as  whether  Jesus  Christ  was 
of  the  same  substance  as  the  Father  or  of  a 
similar  substance  ;  and  whether  the  cup  should 
be  administered  to  the  laity  in  the  Eucharist 
or  only  the  bread.  The  Thirty  Years'  war  in 
Europe  was  a  rehgious  war.  Roman  Catholic 
theories  still  maintain  the  right  of  the  church 
to  enforce  its  teachings  by  the  sword. 

All  these  facts  show  how  far,  through  all 
its  history,  the  church  has  departed  from  the 
teaching  of  Jesus.  When  our  German  theolo- 
gians set  themselves  to  prove  that  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  is  no  sufficient  guide  for  pub- 
lic affairs,  they  have  the  whole  history  of  the 
church  behind  them. 

Nevertheless  they  might  have  noted  that 
the  drift,  for  the  last  few  centuries,  has  been 
in  the  direction  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  It 
is  hardly  conceivable  that  Christian  nations 
should  go  to  war  to-day  for  the  settlement  of 
points  of  doctrine.  Three  hundred  years  ago 


IS   THE  CHURCH   DECADENT?         Ill 

the  whole  church  thought  that  necessary ;  to- 
day a  very  large  part  of  the  church  would  think 
it  horrible  and  monstrous.  It  is  not  very  long 
ajro  that  the  church  believed  in  the  settlement 
by  force  of  disputes  between  individuals.  The 
wager  of  battle  was  supposed  to  be  a  proper 
and  Christian  way  of  determining  the  guilt  or 
innocence  of  an  accused  person.  To  most  of 
the  great  Christians  of  the  fifteenth  century 
the  proposition  to  dispense  with  that  would 
have  seemed  a  "  noble  folly,"  just  as  the  pro- 
position of  general  disarmament  now  seems  to 
some  twentieth  century  Christians.  But  the 
church  has  learned  that  there  are  better  ways 
of  settling  personal  quarrels  than  the  wager 
of  battle ;  and  it  is  likely  to  learn,  after  a 
while,  that  there  are  better  ways  of  settling 
international  and  industrial  difficulties  than 
the  way  of  war.  The  church  is  beginning  to 
see  that  the  way  of  Jesus  is  not,  after  all,  so 
impracticable  as  it  has  always  been  supposed 
to  be ;  it  is  beginning  to  discern  the  truth 
that  the  law  of  service  is  a  stronger  law  than 
the  law  of  strife.  One  of  these  days  we  shall 
find  the  church  of  Jesus  taking  its  stand  on 
the  Golden  Rule  as  the  practical  rule  of  every- 
day life,  and  insisting  upon  the  organization 


112    THE  CHURCH   AND  MODERN   LIFE 

of  the  industrial  and  the  political  order  on 
the  basis  of  good-will.  When  that  day  comes 
we  shall  have  a  right  to  say  that  the  church 
believes  in  Jesus  Christ.  When  that  day  comes 
it  will  be  evident  to  all  that  the  main  cause  of 
the  church's  enfeeblement  through  all  these 
centuries  has  been  her  unbelief.  And  we  shall 
marvel  that  it  took  her  so  long  to  find  out 
what  might  there  is  in  meekness  and  what 
force  in  gentleness  ;  and  that  it  was  so  hard 
for  her  to  understand  that  the  foolishness  of 
God  is  wiser  than  men  and  the  weakness  of 
God  stronger  than  men. 

2.  The  second  of  the  church's  chronic  in- 
firmities has  been  orthodoxism.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  recoil  of  her  unbelief  in  Christ  that 
sent  her  over  into  the  intellectual  prostration 
of  orthodoxism. 

Orthodoxy  is  defined  as  correct  belief.  But 
when  we  ask  what  is  correct  belief,  orthodoxy 
answers :  "  That  which  is  generally  believed 
to  be  correct."  Its  demand  is,  therefore,  con- 
formity to  current  opinion.  It  assumes  that 
essential  truth  has  been  sought  out,  registered 
and  certified  once  for  all  and  finally :  this  you 
must  believe,  and  you  must  believe  nothing 
other  or  more  than  this.  Of  course,  then,  belief 


IS  THE  CHURCH   DECADENT?        113 

must  be  stereotyped  and  stationary.  There 
can  be  no  growth  of  doctrnie ;  no  new  Hght 
can  break  forth  from  God's  holy  word. 

"  Orthodoxy  begins,"  says  Phillips  Brooks, 
"  by  setting  a  false  standard  of  life.  It  makes 
men  aspire  after  soundness  in  the  faith  rather 
than  after  richness  in  the  truth.  ...  It 
makes  possible  an  easy  transmission  of  truth, 
but  only  by  the  deadening  of  truth,  as  a 
butcher  freezes  meat  in  order  to  carry  it  across 
the  sea.  Orthodoxy  discredits  and  discourages 
inquiry,  and  has  made  the  name  of  free  thinker, 
which  ought  to  be  a  crown  and  glory,  a 
stigma  of  disgrace.  It  puts  men  in  the  base 
and  demoralizing  position  in  which  they  apol- 
ogize for  seeking  new  truth.  It  is  responsible 
for  a  large  part  of  the  defiant  liberalism 
which  not  merely  disbelieves  the  orthodox 
dogma,  but  disbelieves  it  with  a  sense  of  at- 
tempted wrong  and  of  triumphant  escape.  It 
is  orthodoxy  and  not  truth  which  has  done 
the  persecuting.  The  inquisitions  and  dungeons 
and  social  ostracisms  for  opinion's  sake  belong 
to  it."  ' 

It  is  evident  that  when  for  loyalty  to  the 
truth  is  substituted  loyalty  to  a  prescribed 

^  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  194. 


114    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

statement  of  truth,  the  entire  moral  order  is 
subverted.  Truth  for  me  is  what  justifies  it- 
self to  my  reason  and  insight ;  to  that  my 
choices  must  conform  ;  by  that  my  conduct 
must  be  guided.  To  accept  statements  to 
which  my  judgment  does  not  assent,  which  are 
repugnant  to  my  reason,  because  others  seek 
to  impose  them  upon  me,  is  in  the  highest 
degree  immoral.  "  Let  every  man  be  fully 
persuaded  in  his  own  mind,"  is  the  apostolic 
maxim. 

Every  honest  man  wants  to  know  what  is 
true,  and  seeks  to  have  his  character  and  his 
conduct  conform  to  the  truth.  But  orthodoxy 
insists  that  he  shall  limit  his  acceptance  to 
fixed  and  definite  statements  prepared  for  him 
by  others.  Freedom  of  investigation  is  denied 
him.  The  limits  are  set,  beyond  which  his 
thought  must  not  range.  If  there  is  truth 
outside  of  the  boundaries  of  orthodoxy,  he 
must  not  reach  out  after  it ;  if  he  does,  he 
shall  suffer  the  consequences. 

For  there  always  is  a  penalty  for  heresy. 
Those  who  diverge  from  the  orthodox  stand- 
ards are  always  exposed  to  some  measure  of 
censure  or  discredit.  In  former  days  the  stake 
or  the  gallows  was  the  penalty.    John  Huss 


IS  THE  CHURCH  DECADENT?        115 

and  Michael  Servetus,  Ridley,  Latimer,  and 
Cranmer  were  put  to  death  on  the  demand 
of  orthodoxy.  It  was  not  because  they  were 
not  lovers  and  seekers  of  truth;  it  was  be- 
cause they  decHned  to  assent  to  the  statements 
which  authority  sought  to  impose  on  them. 
Orthodoxy  has  found  a  great  variety  of  meth- 
ods of  enforcing  its  demand ;  in  recent  times 
it  does  not  often  resort  to  physical  coercion, 
but  it  never  fails  to  use  some  kind  of  pressure. 
Those  to  whom  orthodoxy  is  dearer  than  truth 
have  ways  of  their  own,  even  now,  of  making 
uncomfortable  those  to  whom  truth  is  dearer 
than  orthodoxy.  Thus  it  is  that  the  progress 
of  truth  has  been  greatly  impeded.  "  Ye  shall 
know  the  truth,"  said  Jesus,  "  and  the  truth 
shall  make  you  free."  "Ye  shall  know,"  says 
orthodoxism,  "  only  the  truth  that  has  been 
prescribed  and  ticketed  by  authority  ;  ye  shall 
be  taught  what  is  orthodox,  and  orthodoxy 
shall  keep  you  safe  and  sound."  The  entire 
attitude  of  the  mind  is  changed,  under  this 
demand.  It  is  no  longer  that  of  free  inquiry, 
of  open-minded  search  for  truth;  it  is  that 
of  passive  assent,  of  unreasoned  submission  to 
authority. 

Just  to  the  extent  to  which  orthodoxism 


116    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

succeeds  in  forcing  its  demand  is  progress 
rendered  impossible.  There  have  always  been 
brave  men  to  whom  truth  was  dearer  than 
orthodoxy,  and  to  them  we  owe  all  the  gains 
the  church  has  made.  "  The  lower  orders  of 
the  church's  workers,  the  mere  runners  of 
her  machinery,"  says  Bishop  Brooks,  "  have  al- 
ways been  strictly  and  scrupulously  orthodox ; 
while  all  the  church's  noblest  servants,  they 
who  have  opened  to  her  new  heavens  of  vision 
and  new  domains  of  work,  —  Paul,  Origen, 
Tertullian,  Dante,  Abelard,  Luther,  Milton, 
Coleridge,  Maurice,  Swedenborg,  Martineau, 
—  have  again  and  again  been  persecuted  for 
being  what  they  truly  were  —  unorthodox."  ' 
The  temper  of  coercion,  physical  or  moral, 
which  is  an  essential  element  in  orthodoxism, 
always  produces,  in  those  who  do  not  submit 
to  it,  the  temper  of  resentment  and  rebellion, 
which  largely  characterizes  what  is  known  as 
liberalism.  Those  who  are  thus  flung  off  into 
opposition  are  in  no  mood  to  examine  fairly 
the  truth  that  there  is  in  orthodoxy.  Their 
mental  attitude  is  apt  to  be  quite  as  unfavor- 
able to  the  discovery  of  the  truth  as  that  of 
the  other  party.    Between  those  who  affirm, 

^  Essays  and  Addresses,  p.  189. 


IS  THE   CHURCH  DECADENT?        117 

•with  the  threat  of  the  withdrawal  of  fellow- 
ship, and  those  who  deny,  with  the  sense  of 
injury  and  oppression,  the  truth  has  a  poor 
chance  for  itself  in  this  world.  The  enfeeble- 
ment  of  the  church,  in  all  the  generations,  has 
been  largely  due  to  this  cause. 

What  orthodoxism  produces  when  it  has 
free  course  and  is  glorified,  may  be  seen  in  the 
Greek  church.  More  than  any  other  branch 
of  the  Christian  church  the  Greek  church  has 
put  the  emphasis  upon  orthodoxy.  The  nat- 
ural and  inevitable  result  has  been  that  that 
church  has  destroyed  itself  and  the  nation 
whose  life  it  has  dominated  and  blio^hted.  It 
is  the  Greek  church  that  has  led  Russia  to  its 
doom.  And  it  is  orthodoxism  that  has  made 
the  Greek  church  a  bHnd  leader  of  the  blind, 
and  has  plunged  nation  and  church  into  the 
ditch  together. 

Truth,  not  orthodoxy,  is  the  sovereign  mis- 
tress of  the  human  intellect.  What  I  must 
know,  for  my  salvation,  is  not  what  every- 
body says,  but  what  is  true.  There  is  old 
truth  —  truth  that  has  nourished  the  Hves  of 
men  in  many  generations ;  let  me  cling  to  that 
and  feed  my  soul  upon  it.  There  is  new  truth  — 
some  fuller  outshining  of  the  great  revelation 


118    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

of  God,  in  nature  or  in  human  nature ;  let  me 
hail  that  light  and  walk  in  it. 

It  is  often  useful  for  me  to  know  what 
others  have  believed  and  now  believe.  Not  to 
be  influenced  by  the  consenting  voices  of  the 
great  and  good  of  the  past  would  be  childish 
egotism.  But  it  is  always  needful  that  my 
mind  should  be  open  to  new  truth  and  that  I 
should  be  free  to  seek  it.  Orthodoxism  restricts 
this  right  and  disparages  this  privilege,  and 
in  doing  this  it  has  greatly  weakened  the 
Christian  church. 

Several  other  sources  of  weakness  must  be 
treated  much  more  briefly. 

3.  Sectarianism  is  not  the  least  among 
them.  To  a  large  degree  it  is  the  product  of 
orthodoxism.  Men  who  venture  to  think  for 
themselves  are  driven  forth  from  the  fold  of 
the  faithful  and  compelled  to  organize  in  sepa- 
rate groups.  Sometimes  they  are  not  driven 
out,  they  go  out  and  slam  the  doors  behind 
them.  The  seceders  often  claim  a  superior  or- 
thodoxy ;  their  separation  from  the  fold  is  an 
act  of  judgment  on  those  they  leave  behind. 
The  responsibility  for  these  divisions  some- 
times rests  more  heavily  on  those  who  go  out, 
and  sometimes  on  those  who  stay  in.   On  the 


IS  THE  CHURCH  DECADENT?        119 

one  side  or  the  other,  often  on  both  sides, 
pride  of  opinion  is  a  main  procuring  cause. 
Sometimes  men  go  out  because  they  desire  to 
hold  fast  in  peace  the  truth  which  they  have 
found,  and  sometimes  they  are  thrust  out 
because  they  will  not  permit  those  who  are 
within  to  hold  fast  in  peace  the  truth  which 
is  their  inheritance. 

The  ambition  of  leadership  also  figures 
largely.  Men  who  are  not  able  to  control  the 
church  to  which  they  belong  are  often  tempted 
to  lead  away  a  faction  in  which  they  may  be 
more  conspicuous.  Satan,  according  to  the 
Miltonic  mythology,  was  the  founder  of  the 
first  sect ;  and  his  philosophy  was  that  it  was 
better  to  reign  in  hell  than  serve  in  heaven. 
The  leaders  of  many  of  the  sects  have  had  a 
similar  inspiration. 

It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  all  schisms 
have  sprung  from  selfishness  :  they  have  often 
originated  in  a  larger  vision  of  the  truth,  and 
their  testimony,  which  has  cost  them  many 
sacrifices,  has  enlarged  the  thought  and  en- 
riched the  life  of  the  whole  church. 

It  must,  however,  be  admitted  that  selfish- 
ness, in  the  forms  of  ambition  and  pride  of 
opinion,  has  had  more  to  do  with  the  multi- 


120    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

plication  of  sects  than  love  of  the  truth  or 
loyalty  to  the  Master.  The  existence  of  such 
numbers  of  organizations,  differing  from  one 
another  only  in  the  most  trivial  particulars, 
cannot  be  reconciled  with  the  plain  principles 
of  Christian  morality.  There  is  no  justification, 
in  reason  or  conscience,  for  the  existence  of 
so  many  sorts  and  kinds  and  classes  of  Christ- 
ian disciples.  Even  if  we  could  admit  the 
wisdom  of  the  larger  divisions,  what  excuse 
can  be  offered  for  the  endless  subdivisions? 
What  possible  need  can  there  be  for  thirteen 
different  kinds  of  Baptists,  and  twelve  kinds 
of  Mennonites,  and  eleven  kinds  of  Presby- 
terians, and  seventeen  kinds  of  Methodists, 
and  twenty-three  kinds  of  Lutherans  ?  Could 
any  rational  man  maintain  that  these  multitu- 
dinous variations  on  a  single  string  represent 
distinctions  that  are  useful  ? 

The  rivalries  and  competitions  which  these 
sectarian  divisions  promote  are  the  scandal 
and  the  curse  of  Christendom.  The  sectarian 
procedure  habitually  and  brazenly  sets  aside 
the  Golden  Rule  and  pushes  partisan  interest, 
with  very  slight  regard  for  fairness  or  equity. 
Churches  are  all  the  while  doing  to  other 
churches  what  they  would  not  like  to  have 


IS  THE  CHURCH  DECADENT?        121 

other  churches  do  to  them.  "  Every  church 
for  itself,  and  the  angels  take  the  hindmost," 
is  the  sectarian  motto.  The  competition  which 
exists  in  the  ecclesiastical  realm  is  almost 
always  cutthroat  competition ;  it  destroys  pro- 
perty and  crowds  out  rivals  with  merciless 
purpose. 

No  argument  should  be  needed  to  show 
that  the  existence  of  such  a  spirit  and  ten- 
dency in  the  church  must  cripple  its  power 
and  impede  its  growth.  The  sect  spirit  is  the 
antithesis  of  the  Christian  spirit ;  the  sectarian 
propaganda  is  an  attack  upon  the  fundamen- 
tal principle  of  Christianity,  which  is  unity 
through  love.  The  superior  loyalty  of  every 
true  Christian  is  due  to  the  kingdom  of  God. 
"Seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  his 
righteousness  !  "  What  makes  a  man  a  secta- 
rian is  the  fact  that  he  loves  his  sect  more 
than  the  kingdom  of  God,  and  is  willing  that 
the  kingdom  of  God  should  suffer  loss  in  order 
that  his  sect  may  make  again.  Sectarians  are 
doing  this  very  thing,  all  over  the  land,  every 
day. 

How  great  have  been  the  injuries  suffered 
by  the  Christian  church  through  the  existence 
of  this  antichristian  spirit  of  sect  it  would  be 


122    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

difficult  to  estimate.  How  alien  it  is  to  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  Christ  one  does  not  need  to 
point  out.  It  is  simply  amazing  that  the  fol- 
lowers of  him  who  prayed,  in  his  last  prayer, 
that  his  disciples  might  all  be  one,  in  order 
that  the  world  might  believe  in  his  divine 
commission,  should  imagine  that  they  can  be 
pleasing  Christ  while  they  persist  in  these 
childish  divisions. 

Some  sense  of  the  shame  and  sin  of  secta- 
rianism has,  of  late  years,  been  getting  pos- 
session of  the  mind  of  the  church,  and  the 
tendencies  toward  unity  are  stronger  now  than 
the  tendencies  toward  division.  Splits  and  se- 
cessions are  rare  in  these  times ;  movements 
toward  unity  are  multiplying.  All  this  is 
hopeful,  but  many  generations  of  toil  and 
sacrifice  will  be  required  to  recover  for  the 
church  the  ground  she  has  lost  by  the  ravages 
of  sectarianism. 

4.  Only  one  more  cause  of  the  enfeeble- 
ment  of  the  church  can  be  mentioned  here ; 
that  is  her  too  close  reliance  upon  the  prin- 
ciples and  forces  of  the  material  realm.  She 
too  often  forgets  whence  her  help  must  come  ; 
she  is  too  willing  to  go  down  to  Egypt  for 
her  allies  instead  of  trusting  in  the  Lord  of 


IS  THE  CHURCH   DECADENT?        123 

Hosts.  She  cannot  always  understand  that 
she  is  safer  and  stronger  when  she  puts  her 
entire  reliance  on  moral  and  spiritual  forces ; 
when  she  refuses  to  sacrifice  truth  for  the 
revenues  of  the  rich  or  the  friendship  of  the 
strong. 

The  church  is  probably  suffering  more  from 
this  cause  at  this  day  than  she  has  ever  suf- 
fered in  any  former  period.  She  lives  in  the 
midst  of  the  abounding  marvels  of  the  mate- 
rialistic civilization ;  she  sees  how  much  is 
accomplished  through  the  use  of  material 
forces ;  and  the  spirit  of  the  time  gets  into  her 
brain  and  blood,  and  she  begins  to  think  that 
money  and  the  things  that  money  can  buy  are 
the  most  essential  conditions  of  her  growth 
and  usefulness.  Therefore  she  makes  such 
friendships  and  adopts  such  policies  as  will 
bring  to  her  the  revenues  she  thinks  she  must 
have  for  the  prosecution  of  her  work.  And 
thus  her  vision  is  dimmed  for  the  truth  she 
needs  to  see,  and  her  arm  is  weakened  for  the 
work  she  has  to  do. 

No  influence  so  insidious  as  this,  and  none 
so  fatal,  has  ever  assailed  the  Christian  church. 
She  is  passing  through  her  greatest  tempta- 
tion. It  is  Mammon  who  has  taken  her  up 


124    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

into  an  exceeding  high  mountain  and  shown 
her  the  kingdoms  she  wants  to  conquer  and 
the  glory  she  hopes  to  win,  and  is  saying  to 
her :  "  All  these  things  will  I  give  thee,  if 
thou  wilt  fall  down  and  worship  me ! "  May 
God  grant  her  the  grace  to  answer :  "  Get 
thee  behind  me,  Satan;  I  hear  the  voice  of 
one  who  said  :  Thou  shall  worship  the  Lord 
thy  God,  and  him  only  shalt  thou  serve." 

That  the  church  has  suffered  serious  in- 
jury and  enfeeblement  from  the  causes  we 
have  considered,  —  from  her  lack  of  faith, 
from  her  subjection  to  orthodoxism,  from  the 
ravages  of  sectarianism,  from  her  entangle- 
ments with  Mammon,  no  one  can  deny.  But 
that  these  evils  are  tending  to  increase  is 
not  evident.  There  is  reason  rather  to  hope 
that  they  are  all  on  the  wane,  unless  it  be  the 
last. 

That  the  church  is  far  from  being  in  perfect 
spiritual  condition  we  will  all  admit.  But  that 
she  is  growing  worse  rather  than  better  we 
need  not  believe.  Most  of  these  maladies  are 
of  long  standing,  but  they  are  less  acute  now 
than  once  they  were,  and  there  is  better  hope 
of  recovery.  Above  all,  we  may  say  that  the 
church  knows  to-day  what  ails  her  better  than 


IS  THE  CHURCH   DECADENT?        125 

she  ever  knew  before,  and  that  she  may  there- 
fore more  intelligently  proceed  to  apply  the 
needful  remedies. 

What  kind  of  treatment  is  called  for  will  be 
the  subject  of  the  next  discussion. 


VI 

THE    COMING   REFORMATION 

It  would  be  instructive  to  study  the  attempts 
which  the  church  has  made,  in  past  genera- 
tions, to  escape  from  the  evil  conditions  into 
which  she  has  fallen.  For  she  has  been  con- 
victed more  than  once  of  her  sins  of  omission, 
of  the  perversion  of  her  powers,  and  the 
misuse  of  her  opportunities,  and  has  bestirred 
herself  to  cast  off  the  yokes  that  were  oppress- 
ing her,  and  the  bands  that  were  impeding 
her  progress.  It  cannot  be  said  that  she  has 
ever  yet  become  fully  conscious  of  her  radical 
defect.  She  has  never  quite  clearly  discovered 
that  her  enf eeblement  and  failure  are  primarily 
due  to  the  fact  that  she  has  been  neglecting 
her  real  business  in  the  world,  or  making  it  a 
secondary  concern.  When  she  gets  that  truth 
fully  before  her  mind,  and  that  conviction 
upon  her  conscience,  we  may  hope  for  better 
things. 

There  was,  however,  one  epoch  in  her  his- 
tory when  she   came  very  near  making  this 


THE  COMING   REFORMATION         127 

discovery.  That  was  the  period  of  the  Reform- 
ation in  the  sixteenth  century.  What  happened 
then  is  full  of  interest  for  us  in  these  days ; 
it  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the  problems  with 
which  we  are  dealing. 

We  have  been  taught  by  the  historians  of 
the  Reformation  to  think  of  that  event  as 
mainly  a  theological  crisis,  as  an  intellectual 
revolt  against  certain  doctrines  imposed  by 
the  church  upon  the  faithful,  or  a  rebellion 
against  the  stringency  of  ecclesiastical  disci- 
pline. That  issues  of  this  nature  were  deeply 
involved  in  it  is  true  ;  but  these  were  by  no 
means  the  only  causes  of  that  uprising.  It  was 
largely  a  social  and  economic  movement.  It 
was,  in  its  inception,  less  a  reaction  against 
bad  theology  than  a  revolt  against  unchristian 
social  conditions.  What  weighed  most  heavily 
on  the  people  who  started  the  uprising  that 
we  call  the  Reformation  was  not  theological 
error  and  confusion,  it  was  their  poverty,  their 
servitude,  the  miseries  and  wrongs  of  their 
daily  life.  They  knew  something  of  the  Christ 
of  Nazareth,  and  they  could  not  believe  that 
he  meant  to  leave  them  in  that  condition,  and 
therefore  they  began  to  have  a  dim  sense  of 
the  truth  that  the  church  which  bore  his  name 


128    THE   CHURCH  AND   MODERN   LIFE 

was  misrepresenting  him,  and  needed  to  be 
reformed.  This  was  the  source  of  the  move- 
ment known  as  the  Reformation.  It  was,  there- 
fore, a  sharp  reminder  to  the  church  that  she 
had  wholly  forgotten  her  main  business  in  the 
world. 

One  of  the  latest  of  the  histories  of  the  Re- 
formation, that  of  Dr.  Thomas  M.  Lindsay, 
brings  this  truth  into  clear  light.  His  chapter 
on  "  Social  Conditions"  gives  us  a  vivid  sketch 
of  the  economic  and  social  forces  which  were 
operating  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  and  the 
beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

It  was  the  time  of  transition  from  the  old 
system  of  home  production  and  home  markets 
to  the  era  of  world-wide  commerce.  Under  the 
old  system,  industry  had  been  largely  regu- 
lated by  guilds,  and  there  was  a  fair  measure 
of  equality;  while  trade,  though  not  exten- 
sive, was  regulated  by  civic  leagues. 

But  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  brought 
the  great  geographical  discoveries  and  the  be- 
ginning of  a  world  trade.  "  The  possibili- 
ties of  a  world  commerce,"  says  Dr.  Lindsay, 
"  led  to  the  creation  of  trading  companies ; 
for  a  larger  capital  was  needed  than  individual 
merchants  possessed,  and  the  formation  of 


THE   COMING   REFORMATION         129 

these  companies  overshadowed,  discredited, 
and  finally  destroyed  the  guild  system  of  the 
mediieval  trading  cities.  Trade  and  industry 
became  capitalized  to  a  degree  previously  un- 
known. .  .  .  This  increase  of  wealth  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  confined  to  a  few  favorites 
of  fortune.  It  belonged  to  the  mass  of  the 
members  of  the  great  trading  companies.  .  .  . 
Merchant  princes  confronted  the  princes  of 
the  state  and  those  of  the  church,  and  their 
presence  and  power  dislocated  the  old  social 
relations."  * 

This  enormous  increase  of  wealth  mani- 
fested itself  in  every  form  of  senseless  luxury. 
Of  refinement  there  was  little  ;  pleasures  were 
coarse,  indulgence  was  beastly.  "  Preachers, 
economists,  and  satirists,"  says  Dr.  Lindsay, 
"  denounce  the  luxury  and  immodesty  of  the 
dress  both  of  men  and  women,  the  gluttony 
and  the  drinking  habits  of  the  rich  burghers 
and  of  the  nobility  of  Germany.  We  learn 
from  Hans  von  Schweinichen  that  noblemen 
prided  themselves  on  having  men  among  their 
retainers  who  could  drink  all  rivals  beneath 
the  table,  and  that  noble  personages  seldom 
met  without  such  a  drinking  contest.     The 

^  A  History  of  the  Reformation,  vol.  i,  pp.  85,  86. 


130    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

wealthy,  learned,  and  artistic  city  of  Niirnberg 
possessed  a  public  wagon  which  every  night 
was  led  through  the  streets,  to  pick  up  and 
convey  to  their  homes  drunken  burghers 
found  lying  in  the  filth  of  the  streets."  ^ 

Such  were  the  manners  of  the  house  of 
mirth  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. It  might  be  supposed  that  when  luxury 
was  so  riotous  the  poor  would  have  plenty, 
but  that  is  never  the  case.  Profusion  at  the 
top  of  the  social  ladder  means  poverty  at  the 
bottom.  The  world  has  never  yet  been  so  rich 
that  waste  did  not  work  harm  to  the  neediest. 
Even  if  the  poor  had  been  actually  no  poorer 
in  these  flush  days  than  they  had  been  when 
manners  were  simpler,  the  glaring  contrasts 
would  have  been  maddening.  But  multitudes 
of  them  were,  no  doubt,  not  only  relatively  but 
positively  poorer ;  the  destruction  of  the  guilds 
of  labor,  the  displacements  in  industry,  had 
left  great  numbers  not  only  of  the  peasantry 
and  the  artisans  but  also  of  the  poorer  nobles 
in  practical  destitution.  The  organization  of 
society  was  giving  strength  to  the  strong  and 
weakness  to  those  of  no  might  —  thus  exactly 
reversing  Mary's  prophecy  of  what  her  royal 

1  Hid.  pp.  87,  88. 


THE  COMING  REFORMATION         131 

Son  should  bring ;  and  those  who  were  thus 
dispossessed  and  scattered  felt,  and  had  a  right 
to  feel,  that  the  social  organization  under 
which  such  things  could  be  done  was  anti- 
christian. 

"  While,"  says  Dr.  Lindsay,  "  the  social  tu- 
mults and  popular  uprisings  against  authority, 
which  are  a  feature  of  the  close  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  are  usually  and  rightly  enough  called 
peasant  insurrections,  the  name  tends  to  ob- 
scure their  real  character.  They  were  rather 
the  revolts  of  the  poor  against  the  rich,  of 
debtors  against  creditors,  of  men  who  had 
scantly  legal  rights  or  none  at  all,  against  those 
who  had  the  protection  of  the  existing  laws ; 
and  they  were  joined  by  the  poor  of  the  towns 
as  well  as  by  the  peasantry  of  the  country  dis- 
tricts. The  peasants  generally  began  the  re- 
volt and  the  townsmen  followed,  but  this  was 
not  always  the  case.  Sometimes  the  mob  of 
the  cities  rose  first  and  the  peasants  joined 
afterwards.  In  many  cases,  too,  the  poorer 
nobles  were  in  secret  or  open  sympathy  with 
the  insurrectionary  movement.  On  more  than 
one  occasion  they  led  the  insurgents  and 
fought  at  their  head."  * 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  96. 


132     THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

The  uprising  against  the  church  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  church,  instead  of  being  the 
friend  of  the  poor,  had  become  their  social 
oppressor.  Through  all  these  social  mutter- 
ings  runs  the  outcry  against  the  priests,  and 
this  was  not  because  the  priests  were  teaching 
a  false  theology,  but  because  they  were  grind- 
ing the  faces  of  the  poor.  Not  only  in  Ger- 
many, but  all  over  Europe  this  cry  was  heard. 
"  The  priests,"  says  an  English  reformer, "  have 
their  tenth  part  of  all  the  corn,  meadows, 
pasture,  grain,  wood,  colts,  lambs,  geese,  and 
chickens.  Over  and  besides  the  tenth  part  of 
every  servant's  wages,  wool,  milk,  honey,  wax, 
cheese,  and  butter;  yea  and  they  look  so 
narrowly  after  these  profits  that  the  poor 
wife  must  be  accountable  to  them  for  every 
tenth  egg,  or  else  she  getteth  not  her  rights 
at  Easter,  and  shall  be  taken  as  a  heretic." 
"  I  see,"  said  a  Spaniard,  "  that  we  can 
scarcely  get  anything  from  Christ's  ministers 
but  for  money ;  at  baptism  money,  at  bishop- 
ing  money,  at  marriage  money,  for  confes- 
sion money,  —  no,  not  extreme  unction  with- 
out money  !  They  will  ring  no  bells  without 
money,  no  burial  in  the  church  without 
money;  so  that  it  seemeth   that  Paradise  is 


THE  COMING  REFORMATION         133 

shut  up  from  them  that  hath  no  money.  The 
rich  is  buried  in  the  church,  the  poor  in  the 
churchyard.  The  rich  man  may  marry  with 
his  nearest  kin,  but  the  poor  not  so,  albeit  he 
be  ready  to  die  for  love  of  her.  The  rich  may 
eat  flesh  in  Lent,  but  the  poor  may  not,  albeit 
fish  perhaps  be  much  dearer.  The  rich  man 
may  readily  get  large  indulgences,  but  the 
poor  none  because  he  wanteth  money  to  pay 
for  them."  ^ 

This  revolt  against  priestly  oppression  was 
by  no  means,  however,  an  irreligious  uprising. 
It  was  characterized  by  intense  religious  feel- 
ing, with  which,  as  Dr.  Lindsay  says,  "  was 
blended  some  confused  dream  that  the  king- 
dom of  God  might  be  set  up  on  earth,  if  only  the 
priests  were  driven  out  of  the  land."  Among 
a  populace  so  ignorant  it  was,  of  course,  in- 
evitable that  the  social  revolt  should  take  on 
fanatical  forms.  Wild  zealots  arose,  drawing 
the  multitude  after  them,  and  inciting  the 
people  to  revolution.  Hans  Bohm,  a  wander- 
ing piper,  had  visions  and  went  forth  as  a 
preacher  of  righteousness,  railing  against 
priests  and  civil  potentates.  True  religion,  he 
declared,  consisted  in  worshiping  the  Blessed 

*  Seebohm,  The  Era  of  the  Protestant  Revolution,  pp.  57,  58. 


134     THE  CHURCH  AND   MODERN   LIFE 

Virgin,  but  the  priests  were  thieves  and  rob- 
bers, the  Emperor  was  a  miscreant,  "  who  sup- 
ported the  whole  vile  crew  of  princes,  over- 
lords, tax  gatherers,  and  other  oppressors  of 
the  poor."  He  predicted  the  coming  of  a  day 
when  the  Emperor  himself  would  be  forced, 
like  all  poor  folks,  to  work  for  days'  wages. 
The  people  flocked  by  thousands  to  hear  him 
preach,  but  his  day  was  brief. 

They  burnt  him  at  the  stake,  but  multi- 
tudes venerated  him,  and  made  pilgrimages 
to  the  chapel  which  had  been  the  scene  of  his 
triumph.  The  "  Bundschuh "  revolts  which 
broke  out  in  Elsass  and  spread  through  Swit- 
zerland and  Germany  were  of  a  similar  charac- 
ter. Then  came  years  of  famine,  which  deep- 
ened the  popular  disquiet,  and  which  help 
to  explain  the  fact  that  "  on  the  eve  of  the 
Reformation  the  condition  of  Europe,  and  of 
Germany  in  particular,  was  one  of  seething  dis- 
content and  full  of  bitter  class  hatreds —  the 
trading  companies  and  the  great  capitalists 
against  the  guilds,  the  poorer  classes  against  the 
wealthier,  and  the  nobles  against  the  towns." 

These  were  the  social  conditions  in  the 
midst  of  which  Luther  appeared.  It  was  on 
this  turbulent  flood  of  social  unrest  that  the 


THE  COMING  REFORMATION         135 

Reformation  was  launched.  When  the  great 
reformer's  voice  was  heard,  denouncing 
priestly  misrule  and  hierarchical  tyranny, 
these  were  the  people  who  listened,  and  they 
interpreted  his  words  by  their  own  experience. 
If  his  quarrel  was  largely  with  theological  or 
ecclesiastical  abuses,  theirs  was  mainly  with 
industrial  inequalities,  but  it  seemed  to  them 
that  he  was  fighting  their  battle.  Indeed,  his 
brave  words  gave  fit  utterance  to  their  hopes. 
For,  as  the  historian  reminds  us,  Luther's  mes- 
sage was  democratic.  That  must  have  been 
its  character  if  it  was,  in  any  proper  sense,  a 
return  to  "  the  simplicity  that  is  in  Christ." 
"It  destroyed  the  aristocracy  of  the  saints,  it 
leveled  the  barriers  between  the  layman  and 
the  priest,  it  taught,  the  equality  of  all  men 
before  God,  and  the  right  of  every  man  of 
faith  to  stand  in  God's  presence,  whatever  be 
his  rank  and  condition  of  life.  He  had  not 
confined  himself  to  preaching  a  new  theology. 
His  message  was  eminently  practical.  In  his 
*  Appeal  to  the  Nobility  of  the  German  Na- 
tion' Luther  had  voiced  all  the  grievances 
of  Germany,  had  touched  upon  almost  all 
the  open  sores  of  the  time,  and  had  foretold 
disasters  not  very  far  off.    Nor  must  it  be  for- 


136    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

gotten  that  no  great  leader  ever  flung  about 
wild  words  in  such  a  reckless  way.  Luther  had 
the  gift  of  strong,  smiting  phrases,  of  words 
which  seemed  to  cleave  to  the  very  heart  of 
things,  of  images  which  lit  up  a  subject  with  the 
vividness  of  a  flash  of  lightning.  He  launched 
tracts  and  pamphlets  from  the  press  about 
almost  everything,  written  for  the  most  part 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  and  when  the  fire 
burned.  His  words  fell  into  souls  full  of  the 
fermenting  passion  of  the  times.  They  drank 
in  with  eagerness  the  thoughts  that  all  men 
were  equal  before  God,  and  that  there  are 
divine  commands  about  the  brotherhood  of 
mankind  of  more  importance  than  all  human 
legislation.  They  refused  to  believe  that  such 
golden  ideas  belonged  to  the  realm  of  spirit- 
ual life  above."  ^ 

When,  therefore,  the  religious  reformation 
was  fairly  launched,  a  great  uprising  of  the 
poor  people  speedily  followed.  It  seemed  to 
them  that  the  return  to  Christ  meant,  for  them, 
the  breaking  of  yokes  and  the  enlargement  of 
opportunity,  and  they  proceeded  to  claim  for 
themselves  some  portion  of  the  liberty  that 
belonged  to  them.    Their  demands,  as  voiced 

^  Op.  cit.  pp.  327,  328. 


THE   COMING   REFORMATION         137 

in  their  "  Twelve  Articles,"  were  by  no  means 
extravagant,  from  our  point  of  view.  The 
abuses  of  which  they  complained  were  fla- 
grant, the  rights  they  claimed  were  far  less 
than  are  now,  even  in  despotic  Russia,  fully 
granted  to  the  humblest  people.  And  they 
protested  most  earnestly  that  they  "  wanted 
nothing  contrary  to  the  requirements  of  just 
authority,  whether  civil  or  ecclesiastical,  nor 
to  the  gospel  of  Christ." 

It  would,  however,  have  been  unreasonable 
to  expect  that  such  people  would  confine  their 
protest  within  the  bounds  of  law  and  order. 
It  was,  in  fact,  a  revolution,  and  it  discerned 
no  way  to  its  goal  but  the  way  of  violence. 
That,  indeed,  is  the  path  that  most  of  the 
seekers  after  liberty  have  felt  constrained  to 
take. 

What  was  Luther's  relation  to  this  uprising? 
It  cannot  be  said  that  he  had  kindled  the 
flame,  but  he  had  fanned  it  to  a  conflagration. 
And  yet  when  it  began  to  rage,  he  found  him- 
self unable  to  control  it.  It  had  come  to  pass, 
in  the  exigencies  of  the  warfare  he  was  wag- 
ing, that  his  allies  were  the  German  princes. 
Only  through  them,  as  he  believed,  could  he 
hope  to  win  the  fight  he  was  making  against 


138    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

the  Roman  hierarcliy.  If  he  put  himself  at 
the  head  of  the  peasants'  movement  he  would 
alienate  the  princes,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that 
the  Protestant  cause  in  Germany  would  be 
stamped  out  in  blood.  And  therefore,  after 
vainly  attempting  to  quiet  the  insurrection, 
with  whose  principal  aims  he  had  confessed 
himself  in  sympathy,  he  turned  upon  the  peas- 
ants in  almost  savage  wrath,  and  in  his  tract 
"Against  the  Murdering,  Thieving  Hordes  of 
Peasants,"  he  urged  the  princes  to  crush  the 
insurrection.  "  In  the  case  of  an  insurgent," 
he  says,  "  every  man  is  both  judge  and  execu- 
tioner. Therefore,  whoever  can  should  knock 
down,  strangle,  and  stab  such  publicly  or  pri- 
vately, and  think  nothing  so  venomous,  per- 
nicious, and  devilish  as  an  insurgent.  .  .  . 
Such  wonderful  times  are  these  that  a  prince 
can  merit  heaven  better  with  bloodshed  than 
another  with  prayer." 

The  princes  followed  Luther's  counsel, 
and  the  peasants'  uprising  was  put  down  with 
relentless  severity.  Thus  ended  in  blood  the 
movement  which  promised  to  make  the  church 
the  champion  of  social  freedom.  It  seems,  as 
we  look  back  upon  it,  a  tragical  issue.  What 
these  poor  people  asked  for  was  really  only  a 


THE   COMING   REFORMATION         1:39 

crumb  or  two  from  the  table  of  the  lords  of 
privilege ;  they  thought  that  the  brotherhood 
taught  by  Jesus  warranted  them  in  expecting 
it,  and  they  seemed  to  hope  that  the  church 
of  Jesus  Christ,  when  purified  from  formalism 
and  superstition,  would  support  that  expecta- 
tion. It  must  have  been  a  bitter  disappoint- 
ment to  them.  And  it  is  a  sorrowful  reflec- 
tion that  the  great  hero  of  the  Reformation 
fell,  in  this  matter,  so  far  below  the  Christian 
ideal. 

Doubtless  his  strenuous  repugnance  to  re- 
volutionary methods  was  a  good  trait  in  his 
character ;  but  surely  revolutions  are  some- 
times justifiable,  and  it  looks,  at  this  distance, 
as  though  this  one  was  as  nearly  so  as  most 
of  those  that  have  succeeded.  If  Luther  had 
put  his  great  heart  and  mighty  will  at  the 
head  of  this  movement  which  he  confessed  to 
be  most  righteous,  it  might  have  succeeded, 
and  Protestantism,  in  its  beginnings,  might 
have  made  a  firm  alliance  with  those  whom 
Jesus  Christ  recognizes  as  his  representatives 
in  the  earth.  But  it  was  hard  for  him  to  be- 
lieve that  the  poor  of  this  world,  chosen  to  be 
rich  in  faith  and  heirs  of  the  kingdom,  were 
stronger  allies  than  the  German  nobles.    He 


140    THE   CHURCH  AND   MODERN   LIFE 

thought  that  he  must  have  the  support  of  the 
princes,  and  he  turned  his  back  on  Christ's 
poor. 

It  was  a  melancholy  conclusion,  not  only 
for  Luther  but  for  the  cause  which  he  repre- 
sented. "It  is  probable,"  says  Dr.  Lindsay, 
"  that  he  saved  the  Reformation  in  Germany 
by  cutting  it  free  from  the  revolutionary 
movement,  but  the  wrench  left  marks  on  his 
own  character  as  well  as  in  the  movement  he 
headed."  One  wonders  whether  success  won 
at  such  cost  is  worth  having ;  and  whether,  if 
he  had  gone  down  with  the  peasants  in  their 
struggle  for  freedom  and  opportunity,  the 
sacrifice  would  not  have  brought  a  larger  and 
fairer  Reformation. 

It  was  the  coming  reformation  to  which 
your  attention  was  called,  and  we  have  kept 
our  eyes  for  a  long  time  upon  the  past.  But 
this  history  has  been  uttering,  through  the 
entire  recital,  its  own  prophetic  word.  Condi- 
tions have  greatly  changed  since  the  sixteenth 
century ;  but  we  are  still  confronting  the  same 
issue  which  forced  itself  upon  the  church  in 
the  days  of  Luther.  Many  of  the  disabilities 
and  wrongs  under  which  the  common  people 
■were  suffering  then  have  been  removed,  but 


THE  COMING   REFORMATION        141 

the  poor  are  still  with  us,  and  the  cries  of 
millions  of  overworked,  underfed,  pale-faced 
men  and  women  and  children  have  entered 
into  the  ears  of  the  Lord  of  Sabaoth.  There 
ought  not  to  be  any  poor  people  in  this  coun- 
try ;  if  it  were  a  thoroughly  Christian  country 
there  would  not  be.  If  there  were  those  who 
because  of  mental  or  physical  defect  were  un- 
able to  care  for  themselves,  we  could  easily 
provide  for  their  wants,  and  in  the  exercise  of 
such  compassion  we  should  find  an  abundant 
reward.  If  there  were  those  who  because  of 
idleness  and  vice  were  indisposed  to  provide 
for  themselves,  we  should  find  a  way  of  inspir- 
ing them  with  a  better  mind.  But,  if  this  were 
a  thoroughly  Christian  country,  there  would 
be  no  willing  workers  dwelling  anywhere  near 
the  borders  of  want.  There  are  resources  here 
which  are  ample  for  the  abundant  supply  of 
all  human  needs  ;  if  ours  were  a  completely 
Christianized  society,  the  needs  of  those  who 
were  able  and  willing  to  work  would  be  abun- 
dantly supplied. 

We  are  often  told  that  this  is  already  done ; 
that  there  are  no  poor  in  this  country  save 
those  who  are  either  incompetent  or  indolent 
or  vicious.  If  that  could  be  proved,  the  ques- 


142    THE  CHURCH   AND  MODERN  LIFE 

tion  would  still  remain  whether  the  incompe- 
tency and  the  indolence  and  the  viciousness 
may  not,  to  a  considerable  degree,  be  the 
effects  of  causes  for  which  society  is  respon- 
sible, and  which,  in  a  thoroughly  Christianized 
society,  would  not  be  permitted  to  exist.  But 
it  cannot  be  proved  that  poverty  is  wholly  the 
fault  of  the  poor.  The  fact  is  that  a  very  large 
number  of  those  who  are  doing  the  world's 
work  to-day  are  receiving  less  than  their  fair 
share  of  the  wealth  they  produce. 

It  is  true  that  there  are  many  laborers  who 
earn  large  wages.  Compactly  organized  labor 
unions  have  been  able  to  secure  a  favorable 
distribution  of  the  product  of  their  industry. 
But  we  are  often  reminded  that  but  a  small 
percentage  of  the  laborers  of  this  country  are 
organized ;  and  the  wages  of  those  thus  un- 
protected are  often  lamentably  small.  Many 
attempts  have  been  made  to  find  out  what 
is  the  average  wage  of  the  average  work- 
man ;  our  census  reports  contain  very  care- 
fully prepared  statistics.  I  have  taken  pains 
to  go  over  some  of  these,  and  here  are  the 
results. 

In  the  textile  trades,  with  661,451  work- 
ers, the  average  weekly  wage  of  all  workers  is 


THE  COMING   REFORMATION         143 

$6.07;  of  men  over  sixteen,  ,$7.63;  of  wo- 
men, $5.18  ;  of  children  under  sixteen,  $2.15. 

In  the  iron  workers'  trades,  with  222,607 
workers,  the  average  weekly  wage  is   $10.46. 

In  the  boot  and  shoe  trades,  with  142,922 
workers,  the  average  for  all  is  $7.96  ;  for  men 
over  sixteen,  $9.11 ;  for  women,  $6.13  ;  for 
children  under  sixteen,  $3.40. 

In  the  men's  clothing  trades,  with  120,950 
workers,  the  average  for  all  is  $7.06  ;  for 
men,  $10.90 ;  for  women,  $4.88 ;  for  children, 
$2.61. 

These  weekly  wages  are  obtained  by  divid- 
ing the  annual  wage  by  52.  Often  the  weekly 
rate  is  much  higher,  but  for  many  weeks  the 
workers  are  unemployed  ;  the  only  fair  estimate 
is  that  which  is  based  upon  the  annual  wage. 

Have  we  any  right  to  be  content  with  con- 
ditions like  these  ?  Is  the  averasre  waj^e  of  the 
average  worker,  as  it  is  here  indicated,  all  that 
he  ought  to  ask  ?  Should  society  wish  him  to 
be  content  with  such  an  income?  Sit  down 
yourself  and  figure  out  just  what  it  would 
mean  to  be  obliged  to  maintain  a  family  of 
four  or  five  on  such  a  stipend  as  is  indicated 
in  any  of  these  trades  —  even  those  best  paid. 
Find  out  how  much  should  have  to  go  for 


144    THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN   LIFE 

rent,  and  how  much  for  food,  and  how  much 
for  the  plainest  clothing,  and  how  much  for 
doctor's  bills,  and  school  books,  and  street-car 
fare,  and  how  much  would  be  left,  after  that, 
for  books  and  church  contributions  and  the 
wholesome  pleasures  which  we  ought  to  count 
among  the  necessaries  of  life.  Life  can  be 
maintained  on  such  an  income,  but  is  it  the 
kind  of  life  that  we  wish  our  fellow  men  to 
live  ?  And  is  there  any  need  that  life,  for  the 
humble  laborer,  should  be  reduced  in  this 
rich  land  to  its  lowest  terms  ?  With  the  mar- 
velous productiveness  of  fields  and  mines  and 
forests  and  waters,  with  the  immense  develop- 
ment of  machinery,  by  which  the  wealth  of 
the  nation  is  multiplied,  might  we  not  have 
an  organization  of  industry  and  a  method  of 
distribution  which  would  give  to  the  army  of 
manual  toilers  a  much  larger  average  income  ? 
That  is  the  question  they  are  asking,  and  it 
calls  for  a  candid  answer.  Their  needs  are  not 
as  dire  as  were  those  of  the  German  peasants 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  but  they  are  real 
and  serious  needs.  Now,  as  then,  a  tremendous 
industrial  revolution  has  dislocated  industries 
and  demoralized  and  impoverished  many ;  now, 
as  then,  the  concentration  of  capital  in  great 


THE   COMING   REFORMATION         145 

companies  has  destroyed  small  enterprises  and 
left  many  who  were  once  thrifty  stranded  and 
discouraged  ;  now,  as  then,  glaring  contrasts 
in  condition  excite  the  resentments  of  the 
needy ;  now,  as  then,  the  propertiless  are  won- 
dering whether  this  is  the  kind  of  thing  that 
the  church  has  been  looking  for  when  she  has 
prayed  that  the  kingdom  of  God  may  come. 
And  there  is  a  feeling  now,  as  there  was 
then,  among  the  millions  of  the  toilers,  that 
the  church  which  assumes  to  represent  Jesus 
Christ  needs  to  be  reformed,  in  order  that 
through  its  testimony  and  its  leadership  the 
kingdom  of  God  may  come. 

It  is  sadly  true  that  there  are  many  among 
these  toiling  millions  who  are  embittered 
against  the  church,  who  have  no  faith  in  it, 
and  no  expectation  that  any  good  will  come 
out  of  it ;  but  the  great  majority  are  not  hos- 
tile to  the  church ;  at  worst  they  are  indifferent, 
and  this  indifference  is  due  to  their  belief  that 
the  church  no  longer  represents  Jesus  Christ. 
Toward  him  there  is  often  a  pathetic  outreach- 
ing  of  hope ;  if  the  church  would  come  back 
to  the  simplicity  that  is  in  Christ  and  would 
plant  itself  on  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  it 
would  quickly  win  their  loyalty.    And  I  can- 


146    THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN   LIFE 

not  help  feeling  that  now,  as  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  there  is  in  the  minds  of  the  toiling 
millions  "  a  confused  dream  that  the  kingdom 
of  God  might  be  set  up  in  the  land,"  and  that 
the  time  is  ripe  for  it.  Nor  can  I  deem  it  pos- 
sible that  this  great  expectation  of  the  multi- 
tude will  now  be  disappointed.  The  church  of 
this  day  must  be  able  to  see  that  this  call  of 
the  poor  and  the  humble  is  the  call  of  its  Master. 
It  is  with  the  weak  and  the  needy  that  he  is 
always  identified;  service  of  them  is  loyalty 
to  him ;  neglect  of  them  is  scorn  of  him.  It 
is  his  own  word. 

The  coming  reformation  will  be  signalized 
by  a  great  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  church 
toward  the  toiling  classes.  It  will  not  turn  its 
back  on  them,  as  it  did  in  Luther's  day ;  it 
will  not  maintain  toward  them  an  attitude  of 
kindly  patronage,  as  it  has  done  in  our  day ; 
it  will  recognize  the  fact  that  its  welfare  is 
bound  up  with  them ;  that  the  barriers  which 
separate  them  from  its  sympathies  and  fellow- 
ships must  be  broken  down,  at  whatever  cost ; 
that  it  must  make  them  beheve  that  the  church 
of  Jesus  Christ  is  their  church ;  that  it  needs 
them  quite  as  much  as  they  need  it ;  that  it 
is  a  monstrous  thing  even  to  conceive  that  a 


THE  COMING  REFORMATION         147 

church  of  Jesus  Christ  could  exist  as  a  class 
institution,  with  the  largest  social  class  in  the 
community  outside  o£  it. 

The  coming  reformation  will  consist  in  the 
awakening  of  the  church  to  its  social  respon- 
sibilities. It  will  see  more  clearly  than  it  has 
ever  yet  seen,  that  those  who  pray  that  the 
kingdom  of  God  may  come,  and  who  are  re- 
sponsible, as  citizens  of  a  republic  are  respon- 
sible, for  the  answering  of  that  prayer,  must 
see  to  it  that  justice  and  liberty  and  opportu- 
nity are  established  in  the  land.  The  church 
of  Jesus  Christ,  with  a  passion  that  is  born 
of  loyalty  to  its  Master,  must  set  itself  to  the 
task  of  realizing,  in  the  social  order,  the  prin- 
ciples of  his  teaching.  That  was  what  the 
peasants  of  the  sixteenth  century  called  upon 
it  to  do  ;  and  for  answer  it  turned  and  smote 
them  to  the  earth.  It  will  not  repeat  that 
blunder,  w^hich  was  nothing  short  of  a  crime. 
It  hears  the  same  call  to-day,  and  when  it 
obeys,  as  obey  it  must,  it  will  save  its  own  life 
and  that  of  the  nation  with  whose  destiny  it 
is  put  in  trust. 


VII 

SOCIAL    REDEMPTION 

The  New  Reformation  will  be  wrouglic  out 
with  weapons  that  are  not  carnal.  One  of  the 
lessons  that  the  church  has  learned,  in  the 
nineteen  centuries  of  its  history,  is  that  it  must 
keep  itself  free  from  all  suspicion  of  entangle- 
ment with  physical  force. 

That  statement  needs  qualification.  It  is 
not  universally  true.  The  Greek  church,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  still  fatally  involved  in  poHtical 
complications  ;  the  Roman  church,  while  forced 
to  abstain  from  the  use  of  the  temporal  power, 
has  maintained  its  right  to  use  it ;  and  other 
state  churches,  as  those  of  England  and  Ger- 
many, retain  some  hold  upon  the  political  arm. 
But  we  are  speaking  of  the  church  in  our  own 
country ;  and  of  the  American  church  it  is 
true  that  it  has  ceased  to  rely  upon  the  power 
of  the  state.  The  entire  divorce  which  our  con- 
stitution decrees  between  the  government  of 
the  church  and  the  government  of  the  state 
has  become,  with  us,  a  settled  policy,  which  we 


SOCIAL  REDEMPTION  149 

do  not  wish  to  disturb.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
intelligent  Roman  Catholics  in  the  United 
States  would  be  willing  to  have  this  condition 
changed,  and  no  other  Christians  would  for 
one  moment  consent  to  it. 

What  the  church  does  in  the  way  of  im- 
proving social  conditions  must,  therefore,  be 
done  by  purely  moral  and  spiritual  agencies. 
Society  is  not  to  be  Christianized  by  any  kind 
of  coercion.  The  church  cannot  use  force  in 
any  way,  nor  can  it  enter  into  any  coalition  with 
governments  that  rest  on  force.  "  It  is  not  by 
might  nor  by  power,  but  by  my  Spirit,  saith 
the  Lord,"  that  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  are 
to  become  the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and  of  his 
Christ.  It  is  as  irrational  to  try  to  propagate 
Christianity  by  coercive  measures  of  any  de- 
scription, as  it  would  be  to  try  to  make  plants 
grow  by  applying  to  them  mechanical  pres- 
sure. 

Nor  can  the  church  undertake  to  dictate  or 
prescribe  the  forms  of  industrial  society.  Its 
function  is  not  the  organization  of  industry. 
It  would  not  wisely  attempt  to  decide  between 
different  methods  of  managing  business. 

It  would  not,  for  example,  be  expedient  for 
the  church,  at  the  present  time,  to  take  sides 


150    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

in  the  controversy  between  collectivism  and 
private  enterprise.  The  Socialists  declare  that 
the  wage  system,  based  on  private  capital, 
tends  to  injustice  and  oppression ;  the  advo- 
cates of  the  existing  system  contend  that 
Socialism  would  destroy  the  foundations  of 
thrift  and  welfare.  The  church  cannot  be  the 
umpire  in  this  contest,  nor  can  it  take  sides 
with  either  party.  Questions  of  economic 
method  are  beyond  its  province.  Its  concern 
is  not  with  the  machinery  of  society,  but  with 
the  moral  motive  power.  Or,  it  might  be  truer 
to  say  that  it  seeks  to  invigorate  the  moral  life 
of  men,  and  trusts  that  reinforced  life  to  make 
its  own  economic  forms.  Its  business  is  to  fill 
men's  minds  with  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus, 
and  to  make  them  see  that  that  truth  applies 
to  every  human  relation  ;  and  it  ought  to  be- 
lieve that  when  this  truth  is  thus  received  and 
thus  applied,  it  will  solve  all  social  problems. 
When  employers  and  employed  are  all  filled 
with  the  spirit  of  Christ,  the  wage  system  will 
not  be  a  system  of  exploitation,  but  a  means  of 
social  service. 

Here  is  an  employer  of  many  hundreds  of 
men,  at  the  head  of  a  very  large  business, 
which  is  rapidly  increasing.    This  is  not  an 


SOCIAL  REDEMPTION  151 

imaginary  case.  This  employer  is  a  man  of 
flesh  and  blood,  and  he  is  in  the  very  thick 
of  the  competitive  melee ;  he  is  using  the 
machinery  of  the  wage  system,  but  he  is  gov- 
erning all  his  business  by  the  principles  of 
Christianity,  and  the  business  is  thriving  in  a 
marvelous  way.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
manager  is  piling  up  money  for  himself,  for 
he  is  not :  he  is  living  very  frugally,  and  is 
adding  nothing  to  his  own  accumulation ;  but 
the  business  is  growmg  by  leaps  and  bounds. 
The  increasing  profits,  every  year,  are  dis- 
tributed in  the  form  of  stock  among  the 
laborers  who  do  the  work,  and  the  customers 
who  purchase  the  goods.  The  men  who  do 
the  work  are  buying  for  themselves  beautiful 
homes  in  the  vicinity  of  the  factory  ;  in  a  few 
more  years  they  will  own  a  large  part  of  the 
stock  of  the  concern.  This  manager  is  not 
getting  rich ;  but  he  has  the  satisfaction  of 
seeing  his  business  prospering  in  his  hands ; 
he  is  helping  a  great  many  men  to  find  the 
ways  of  comfort  and  independence,  and  he 
insists  that  he  has  himself  found  the  secret 
of  a  happy  life.  It  is  evident  that  if  all  em- 
ployers were  governed  by  the  same  motives, 
the  wage  system  would  be  an  instrument  of 


152    THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN   LIFE 

philanthropy.  Whether  this  man  is  a  church 
member  or  not  does  not  appear,  but  he  is 
certainly  a  Christian ;  he  has  learned  the  way 
of  Jesus,  and  is  walking-  in  it.  If  the  church 
could  inspire  all  its  members  with  this  kind  o£ 
social  passion,  all  social  questions  would  be 
solved.  And  this  is  the  church's  business  — 
to  inspire  its  members  with  this  kind  of  social 
passion.  Without  this  spirit  in  their  hearts, 
no  matter  what  the  social  machinery  might  be, 
the  outcome  would  be  envying  and  strife  and 
endless  unhappiness. 

We  have  had  the  inside  history  of  some  of 
the  many  communistic  enterprises  that  have 
come  to  grief,  and  all  of  them  have  been 
wrecked  by  the  selfishness  of  their  members, 
most  of  whom  were  seeking  for  soft  places, 
and  shirking  their  duties,  —  each  trying  to 
get  as  much  as  he  could  out  of  the  common- 
wealth and  to  give  in  return  for  it  as  little 
service  as  possible.  These  contrasted  cases 
show  that  the  machinery  of  the  wage  system 
cannot  prevent  the  exercise  of  brotherliness, 
and  that  the  machinery  of  communism  will 
not  secure  it.  No  kind  of  social  machinery 
will  produce  happiness  or  welfare  when  selfish 
men  are  running  it ;  and  no  kind  of   social 


SOCIAL   REDEMPTION  153 

machinery  will  keep  brotherly  men  from  be- 
having brotherly. 

We  are  often  told  by  Socialists  that  the 
present  regime  of  individual  initiative  and 
private  capital  tends  to  make  men  selfish  and 
unbrotherly,  while  the  tendency  of  Socialism 
would  be  to  make  men  unselfish  and  fraternal. 
If  the  church  were  sure  that  this  is  the  truth, 
she  would  be  inchned  to  throw  her  influence 
on  the  side  of  Socialism.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  urged  that  Socialism  tends  to  merge 
the  individual  in  the  mass,  to  destroy  the  vir- 
tues of  self-respect  and  self-reliance,  and  to 
weaken  the  fibre  of  manhood.  If  the  church 
were  sure  that  this  is  true,  she  would  be  con- 
strained to  pause  before  committing  herself  to 
the  socialistic  programme. 

She  knows,  in  fact,  that  there  is  truth  in 
both  these  contentions.  That  the  individual- 
istic regime  has  bred  a  fearful  amount  of 
heartlessness  and  rapacity  is  painfully  evident ; 
that  such  socialistic  experiments  as  have  been 
tried  have  weakened  human  virtue  appears 
to  be  true.  Under  which  regime  the  greater 
damage  would  be  done  is  not  yet  quite  clear. 
Therefore  the  church  cannot  commit  herself 
to  either  of  these  methods.    The  best  work 


154    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

she  can  do,  at  the  present  time,  is  to  inspire 
men  with  a  love  of  justice  and  a  spirit  of  ser- 
vice. She  must  rear  up  a  generation  of  men 
who  hate  robbery  in  all  its  disguises  ;  who  are 
determined  never  to  prosper  at  the  expense 
of  their  neighbors,  and  who  know  how  to  find 
their  highest  pleasure  in  helj^ing  their  fellow 
men.  If  the  Christian  morality  means  any- 
thing, it  means  all  this.  A  church  which  re- 
presents Jesus  Christ  on  the  earth  must  set 
before  herself  no  lower  aim  than  this.  And 
a  generation  of  men  whose  hearts  are  on  fire 
with  this  purpose  may  be  trusted  to  fill  the 
earth  with  righteousness  and  peace,  whether 
they  work  with  the  machinery  of  the  wage 
system  or  with  the  machinery  of  Socialism. 

There  are  many  good  men,  outside  the 
church  as  well  as  within  it,  who  believe  that 
the  existing  social  order  can  never  be  Christ- 
ianized; that  it  must  be  replaced  by  a  new 
social  system.  But  most  of  us  are  still  cling- 
ing to  the  belief  that  the  existing  social  order 
can  be  Christianized,  so  that  justice  may  be 
established  in  it,  and  good-will  find  expression 
through  it.  That  it  has  been  sadly  perverted 
we  all  confess ;  we  acknowledge  with  shame 
that  it  has  become,  in  large  measure,  the  in- 


SOCIAL   REDEMPTION  155 

strument  of  injustice  and  oppression.  But  we 
believe  that  it  may  be  reformed,  so  that  it 
shall  represent,  in  some  fair  degree,  the  king- 
dom of  God. 

The  redemption  of  the  social  order  is,  then, 
the  problem  now  before  us.  Can  it  be  accom- 
plished ?  President  Roosevelt  thinks  that  it 
can,  and  those  who  stand  with  him  and  sup- 
port him  assume  that  the  existing  competitive 
regime  can  be  moralized  and  made  to  repre- 
sent the  interests  of  equity  and  fair  dealing. 
If  this  can  be  done,  nothing  more  is  needed. 
If  it  cannot  be  done,  the  existing  regime  must 
make  way  for  something  better.  The  convic- 
tion that  it  can  be  done  is  finding  expression 
just  now  in  the  vigorous  efforts  that  are  being 
made  to  amend  and  strengthen  the  laws  which 
restrain  plunderers  and  oppressors,  so  that 
opportunities  may  be  equalized  and  the  paths 
to  success  be  kept  open  for  men  of  all  ranks 
and  capacities.  This  is  simple  justice,  and  for 
this  the  church  of  God  must  stand  with  all 
the  might  of  her  influence. 

That  she  has  been  derelict  in  the  discharge 
of  this  duty  must  be  confessed.  If  she  had 
kept  the  charge  committed  to  her,  the  in- 
equalities and  spoliations  now  burdening  soci- 


156    THE   CHURCH   AND  MODERN   LIFE 

ety  would  not  be  in  existence.  For  although  it 
is  not  the  business  of  the  church  to  furnish 
to  the  world  an  economic  programme,  it  is  her 
business  to  see  that  no  economic  programme 
is  permitted  to  exist  under  which  injustice  and 
oppression  find  shelter.  The  right  to  reprove 
and  denounce  all  social  arrangements  by 
which  the  few  prosper  at  the  expense  of  the 
many  is  one  of  her  chartered  rights  as  the  in- 
stitute of  prophecy.  A  church  which  fails  to 
exercise  this  function  is  faithless  to  her  pri- 
mary obligation. 

That  the  church  has  incurred  heavy  blame 
because  of  the  feebleness  of  her  testimony 
against  such  wrongs  must  now  be  confessed, 
and  the  least  she  can  do  to  make  amends  for 
this  infidelity  is  to  speak  now  and  henceforth, 
with  commanding  voice,  against  all  the  cor- 
porate wrongs  that  infest  society.  It  may  be 
that  by  her  testimony  the  magistrates  will  be 
strengthened  so  to  enforce  the  laws  that  ag- 
gressors shall  be  restrained,  and  freedom  and 
opportunity  secured  to  all ;  and  that  thus  the 
existing  industrial  order  may  become,  so  far 
as  law  can  make  it,  the  servant  of  justice  and 
good-will. 

This  is  the  first  step  toward  social  redemp- 


SOCIAL   REDEMPTION  157 

tion.  The  reenthronement  of  justice  is  the 
primary  obligation.  John  the  Baptist  must 
speak  first.  The  conviction  of  social  sin  is  the 
beginning  of  social  righteousness.  The  church 
has  a  great  work  to  do  in  awakening  the  pub- 
lic conscience  to  forms  of  injustice  which  are 
so  involved  and  concealed  that  our  attention 
is  not  fixed  upon  them.  Professor  Ross  has 
just  announced  a  volume  with  the  title  "  Sin 
and  Society."  It  is  an  illuminating  word. 
The  deadliest  of  the  evils  which  are  oppress- 
ing the  community  to-day  come  under  this  cate- 
gory. They  are  hidden  from  the  public  view. 
They  assail  you  from  ambush  and  you  are 
helpless.  The  deadly  missiles  smite  you  on 
every  side,  but  there  is  no  revealing  flash  by 
which  you  can  locate  your  foe.  The  social  order 
is  so  complex  that  wrongs  of  this  nature  are 
easily  perpetrated.  Many  of  the  transactions 
by  which  we  are  wont  to  profit  are  veiled  in- 
justices. They  are  of  a  nature  so  subtle  and 
indirect  that  the  law  has  not  yet  defined  and 
forbidden  them.  Those  who  suffer  these  in- 
justices are  at  a  distance  from  us,  and  there 
is  a  network  of  legal  and  commercial  relations 
between  ourselves  and  them ;  we  know  that 
they  will  never  confront  us  and  call  us  to  ac- 


158    THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN  LIFE 

count ;  it  is  safe  for  us  to  do  wrong,  and  we 
keep  on  doing  it  until  our  consciences  are 
dulled,  and  we  are  not  able  to  see  that  any 
wrong  has  been  done. 

The  fact  is,  that  such  a  complex  social  sys- 
tem as  ours  needs  for  its  safe  administration 
a  kind  of  conscientiousness  far  higher  and 
finer  than  that  which  men  needed  for  honest 
living  fifty  years  ago.  Unless  our  minds  are 
trained  to  see  the  right  and  wrong  of  very  in- 
tricate transactions  ;  unless  our  ethical  imagin- 
ation is  sensitive  enough  to  discern  the  nature 
of  far-reaching  and  wide-spreading  social  re- 
lations, we  shall  constantly  be  profiting  by  the 
injury  of  our  neighbors. 

It  is  the  business  of  the  church  to  train  the 
consciences  of  men  for  the  moral  problems 
that  confront  them,  and  this  work  has  been 
but  indifferently  done.  The  first  step  in  the 
redemption  of  the  social  order  is  the  education 
of  the  Christian  conscience  to  discern  these 
smokeless  sins.  It  is  with  evils  of  this  char- 
acter that  the  nation  is  now  in  a  life  and  death 
grapple ;  the  church  ought  to  be  able,  by  its 
testimony,  to  lend  effective  aid  in  this  conflict. 

The  nature  of  the  testimony  needed  may  be 
indicated  by  a  typical  instance. 


SOCIAL   REDEMPTION  159 

Not  many  years  ago  a  very  prosperous  manu- 
facturing company  was  4ping  business  in  a 
thriving  American  village,  giving  employment 
to  fifteen  hundred  men  and  women,  many  of 
whom  had  purchased  homes,  in  the  expectation 
of  having  permanent  occupation  and  liveli- 
hood. It  was  known  to  be  a  well-paying  busi- 
ness ;  its  stock,  which  was  in  few  hands,  was 
not  in  the  market. 

Suddenly  a  project  of  reorganization  was 
announced,  and  stock  amounting  to  five  times 
the  value  of  the  property  was  placed  upon  the 
market.  It  was  eagerly  taken,  for  the  reputa- 
tion of  the  company  was  very  high.  With  the 
proceeds  of  this  sale  of  securities  the  managers 
made  themselves  very  rich  men.  It  was  not 
necessary  for  them  to  do  business  any  longer. 
Indeed,  they  could  not  have  continued  to  pay 
dividends  on  the  amount  of  stock  which  they 
had  sold  ;  they  had  never  expected  to  do  any 
such  thing.  What  they  did  was  promptly  to 
close  the  business.  The  price  of  the  stock 
dropped  immediately  to  the  neighborhood  of 
zero,  millions  of  values  were  canceled,  and 
thousands  of  investors  were  made  to  suffer 
loss.  But  the  direct  consequences  were  seen 
in  the  village  whose  prosperity  was  suddenly 


160    THE   CHURCH   AND  MODERN  LIFE 

destroyed.  Fifteen  hundred  men  and  women 
were  deprived,  at  a  stroke,  of  employment  and 
livelihood.  In  many  homes  there  was  destitu- 
tion and  hunger ;  hundreds  of  men  were  com- 
pelled to  seek  employment  elsewhere,  sacri- 
ficing the  homes  whose  value  had  been  greatly 
reduced ;  businesses  that  depended  on  the 
patronage  of  the  mill  hands  were  ruined; 
churches  were  paralyzed ;  families  were  scat- 
tered ;  discouraged  men  fell  into  ways  of  dis- 
sipation; young  women  were  led  into  the 
paths  of  shame. 

All  this  was  done  under  the  forms  of  law, 
and  yet  it  would  be  hard  to  find  in  the  annals 
of  crime  an  instance  more  flagitious.  And  the 
men  who  did  this  thing  were  church  members 
—  members  in  good  standing,  leading  mem- 
bers of  an  evangelical  church.  Nor  does  it 
appear  that  they  suffered  any  discredit  in  the 
church  to  which  they  belonged,  and  to  whose 
revenues  they  continued  to  contribute  out  of 
the  plunder  by  which  they  had  impoverished 
and  ruined  so  many.  The  church  had  not  suf- 
ficient moral  sense  to  reprove  and  denounce 
this  iniquity.  What  is  worse,  the  church  had 
not  had  enough  moral  sense  to  make  these  men 
see  beforehand  that  such  an  act  was  infamous. 


SOCIAL  REDEMPTION  161 

Undoubtedly  they  would  have  promptly 
justified  themselves.  "Such  transactions," 
they  would  have  said,  "  are  occurring  every 
day  ;  what  the  law  does  not  forbid,  and  what 
everybody  else  does,  cannot  be  wrong.  The 
property  was  ours,  and  we  had  a  right  to  put 
our  own  price  on  it,  and  sell  it  for  what  it 
would  bring.  The  business  was  ours,  and  we 
had  a  right  to  do  what  we  pleased  with  it,  to 
keep  it  running  or  shut  it  down  when  we  got 
ready :  it  is  a  free  country  :  do  you  think  you 
can  compel  a  man  to  go  on  doing  business 
when  he  prefers  to  quit  ?  We  never  guaran- 
teed permanent  employment  to  these  people  : 
we  paid  them  their  wages  Avhile  they  worked 
for  us,  and  that  is  the  end  of  our  obhgation 
to  them." 

Some  such  answer  they  would,  no  doubt, 
have  made  to  any  one  who  called  in  question 
their  conduct ;  and  by  such  an  answer  they 
would  have  revealed  the  failure  of  the  church 
to  which  they  belonged  to  bring  home  to  them 
their  social  obligations. 

The  existing  social  order  can  never  be  re- 
deemed unless  a  fire  can  be  kindled  on  the 
earth  in  whose  clear  shining  light  such  deeds 
as  these  can  be  seen  in  all  their  deformity, 


162    THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN  LIFE 

and  in  whose  purifying  flame  such  excuses  as 
these  will  be  utterly  consumed.  We  must  have 
laws  to  make  such  wrongs  impossible  ;  but 
behind  the  laws  must  be  the  moral  insight 
and  the  social  passion  which  shall  make  them 
effective,  and  it  is  the  business  of  the  church 
to  furnish  these.  When  this  is  done  we  shall 
have  made  a  good  beginning  in  the  work  of 
social  redemption. 

But  it  will  be  only  a  beginning.  The  work 
of  John  the  Baptist  comes  first,  but  one 
mightier  than  he  must  follow.  The  voice  of 
one  crying  in  the  wilderness  is  but  the  pre- 
lude of  that  larger  revelation  which  is  made 
upon  the  mountain  top.  To  bring  home  to 
men  the  obligations  of  the  law,  and  to  show 
them  wherein  they  are  failing  to  obey  it,  is  the 
first  duty  of  the  church  in  the  present  crisis ; 
but  it  is  the  gospel  with  which  she  is  primarily 
put  in  charge. 

Clearer  teaching  about  social  morahty  is 
fundamental,  but  the  great  need,  after  all,  is 
the  vitalization  of  morality.  The  moral  code, 
no  matter  how  accurate  may  be  its  precepts, 
tends  to  become  a  dead  letter,  unless  it  is  con- 
stantly revivified  by  the  spirit  of  religion. 

The  Sermon   on  the  Mount  is  often  con- 


SOCIAL  REDEMPTION  163 

ceived  of  as  purely  ethical  teaching,  hut  the 
heart  of  it  all  is  religion.  The  revelation  of 
the  Fatherhood  of  God  is  the  light  which 
shines  through  all  these  words  and  furnishes 
the  motive  of  all  this  morality.  If  we  do  the 
thin^-s  here  commanded,  in  the  way  that  Jesus 
expects  us  to  do  them,  it  is  because  we  know 
ourselves  to  be  the  children  of  our  Father  in 
heaven,  living  in  his  presence,  rejoicing  in  the 
great  love  wherewith  he  has  loved  us,  trust- 
ing in  his  care,  seeking  his  kingdom,  doing 
his  will.  The  church  which  represents  Jesus 
Christ  in  the  world  will  never  forget  that  its 
business  is  the  leavening  of  society  with  the 
life  of  Christ ;  but  neither  can  it  forget  that 
the  life  of  Christ  can  only  be  maintained  by 
constant  communion  with  the  Father.  That 
the  spiritual  life  of  Jesus  himself  was  thus 
maintained,  the  record  makes  clear.  The  cen- 
tral fact  of  his  experience  was  his  living  union 
with  the  Father.  We  talk  of  "  the  practice  of 
the  presence  of  God  ; "  Jesus  was  the  only 
man  who  has  ever  perfectly  realized  it.  And 
no  one  who  knew  him  ever  failed  to  see  that 
it  was  the  Father's  kindness  and  compassion 
and  grace  and  truth  that  were  being  mani- 
fested in  his  life.  It  was  because  he  was  filled 


164    THE  CHURCH  AND   MODERN   LIFE 

■with  all  the  fullness  of  God  that  he  imparted 
to  those  who  received  him  the  spirit  of  good- 
will, the  passion  for  social  service. 

The  church  which  represents  him  in  the 
world  will  need,  for  its  social  service,  the 
same  inspiration.  Unless  its  life  is  fed  from 
this  fountain,  its  stream  will  soon  run  dry. 
There  are  those  who  seem  to  think  that  socio- 
logy can  solve  all  the  problems  of  our  mod- 
ern life.  If  sociology  be  sufficiently  expanded, 
this  may  be  true ;  for  a  truly  scientific  socio- 
logy would  have  to  explain  how  men  came  to 
be  social  beings,  and  what  is  the  bond  that 
unites  them.  If  it  finds  that  their  relation  to 
a  common  Father  is  the  fundamental  fact  of 
their  existence,  then  it  would  know  that  reli- 
gion is  at  the  heart  of  it,  and  that  right  re- 
lations with  God  are  the  spring  and  source 
of  right  relations  with  men.  But  a  sociology 
which  ignores  this  primary  fact  has  in  it  no 
redemptive  power. 

The  more  earnestly,  therefore,  we  contend 
that  the  business  of  the  church  is  the  Christ- 
ianization  of  the  social  order,  the  more  stren- 
uously we  must  maintain  that  she  is  power- 
less to  do  this  work  except  as  her  life  is  fed 
by  faith  and  prayer.    The  redemption  of  the 


SOCIAL   REDEMPTION  1G5 

social  order  is  the  greatest  task  she  has  under- 
taken, and  she  needs  for  it  a  strength  that 
can  only  come  from  conscious  fellowship  with 
God.  If  she  ever  needed  inspiration,  she  needs 
it  now.  If  there  ever  was  a  time  when  she 
could  dispense  with  the  divine  guidance  and 
grace,  that  time  is  not  now.  The  churches 
which  desert  the  places  of  prayer,  and  think  to 
substitute  the  wisdom  of  men  for  the  power  of 
God,  are  not  going  to  give  much  aid  in  this 
struggle. 

"  It  must  be  claimed,"  says  one,  "  on  behalf 
of  the  passion  for  God,  that  where  it  exists  it 
will — automatically,  as  has  been  said  —  set 
charity,  love,  all  sweet  graces  of  philanthropic 
activity,  into  quick  and  ceaseless  play.  .  .  . 
If  the  emphasis  of  religious  thought  be  made 
to  fall  upon  the  idea  of  life,  this  cannot 
fail  to  be;  for  to  have  the  divine  life  is  to 
be  possessed  of  and  to  give  out  the  divine 
love.  .  .  .  The  regeneration  of  human  society 
is  found  to  come  from  the  dominance  of  spirit- 
ual passion,  even  though  it  be  not  the  first 
thing  on  which  spiritual  passion  is  set ;  the 
saint  will  be  —  just  because  he  is  a  saint  —  a 
philanthropist  too,  since  a  true  sainthood  must 
number  love  among  the  graces  of  character 


166     THE   CHURCH   AND   MODERN   LIFE 

it  brings.  It  is  a  fact  —  one  has  to  make  the 
sad  admission  —  that  reHgious  people,  pro- 
fessedly spiritual  men  and  women,  have  been 
and  still  are  in  some  cases  eaten  through  and 
through  by  selfishness ;  these  are  those  who, 
so  that  they  can  declare  heaven  to  be  their 
own,  have  no  care  for  the  present  hell  in  which 
so  many  of  their  fellows  spend  their  days 
and  years.  But  that  is  not  because  they  are 
too  deeply  immersed  in  the  passion  for  God,  — 
it  is  because  they  have  not  really  immersed 
themselves  in  its  flood.  And  in  claiming  for  a 
Godward  passion  the  regulative  and  supreme 
place  among  the  elements  of  life,  we  do  but 
secure  a  fuller  tenancy  among  those  elements 
of  a  manward  love ;  for  the  nature  which  sets 
itself  to  receive  the  whole  of  God  will,  ere  it 
knows  it,  and  as  an  automatic  effect  of  the 
new  life  it  wins,  give  itself  to  its  brethren  in 
their  need.  For  God  is  love,  and  he  must 
dwell  in  love  who  dwells  in  God."  * 

We  may  hesitate  to  say  that  when  the  pas- 
sion for  God  is  the  only  thing  aimed  at  it  is 
bound  to  result  in  social  regeneration ;  there 
are  too  many  facts  which  prove  the  contrary. 

1  The  Philosophy  of  Religious  Experience,  by  Henry  W. 
Clark,  pp.  234-236. 


SOCIAL  REDEMPTION  167 

The  aim  must  always  include  both  the  God- 
ward  and  the  man  ward  obligations ;  the  first 
and  the  second  great  commandments  are  o£ 
equal  rank;  what  needs  to  be  insisted  on  is 
the  impossibility  of  divorcing  them. 

The  church  which  seeks  the  redemption  of 
society  cannot,  then,  dispense  with  its  religion. 
Nothing  has  been  made  plainer,  during  the  re- 
cent exposures  of  social  decay,  than  the  fact 
that  our  social  morality  must  have  a  religious 
foundation.  Even  the  man  on  the  street  is 
ready  to  concede  that  no  righteousness  is  ade- 
quate for  the  present  emergency  but  that  which 
springs  from  faith  in  a  righteous  God.  And 
nothing  is  more  needed,  at  this  hour,  than  the 
deepening  of  men's  faith  in  the  great  religious 
verities. 

It  is  often  said  that  the  only  cure  for  exist- 
ing social  ills  is  a  great  revival  of  religion, 
and  this  is  true.  But  the  revival  of  relijrion 
which  is  needed  is  not  the  kind  which  the 
churches  are  most  apt  to  seek.  The  religion 
which  needs  to  be  revived  is  not  that  which 
puts  the  sole  emphasis  on  the  safety  and 
welfare  of  the  individual,  but  that  which 
equally  exalts  the  social  welfare  ;  which  iden- 
tifies the  interests  of  each  with  the  interests 


168    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

of  all;  which  makes  men  see  and  feel  that 
no  salvation  is  worth  anything  to  any  man 
that  does  not  put  that  man  into  Christian  re- 
lations with  his  neighbors.  Nothing  but  reli- 
gion will  do  this  for  any  man,  and  the  re- 
ligion which  fails  to  do  this  is  a  spurious 
Christianity. 

A  great  revival  we  shall  see,  one  of  these 
days,  which  will  have  this  character.  It  will 
bind  together  the  two  great  commandments 
of  the  law,  and  make  men  feel  the  weight  of 
both  of  them.  It  will  compel  them  to  recog- 
nize the  truth  that,  while  the  root  of  their  re- 
ligion is  faith  in  God,  the  fruit  of  their  reli- 
gion is  love  for  men.  It  will  drive  home  the 
fact  that  the  religion  which  does  not  hinder  a 
man  from  being  a  boodler  or  a  grafter  ;  which 
permits  a  man  to  enjoy  rehgion  while  fleecing 
his  neighbors  by  crafty  schemes  of  finance 
or  artful  legalized  robberies ;  which  allows  the 
love  of  gain  to  triumph  over  truth  and  honor 
and  brotherly  kindness ;  which  sits  serene  and 
complacent  while  social  classes  make  war  on 
each  other,  and  children's  hves  are  consumed 
by  grinding  toil,  and  women  are  forced  by 
want  into  the  ways  of  shame,  and  the  enemies 
of  society  are  set  free  to  make  gain  by  the 


SOCIAL  REDEMPTION  169 

ruin  of  human  souls,  is  a  religion  which  is  not 
worth  having.  It  will  insist  that  a  religion 
which  is  rightly  described  as  the  life  of  God 
in  the  souls  of  men,  would  begin  in  the  house 
of  God  itself,  and  kindle  there  a  consuming 
flame  before  which  such  iniquities  could  not 
stand.  Perhaps  it  would  set  men  to  saying  — 
they  might  not  feel  like  singing  —  Thomas 
Hughes's  great  hymn  :  — 

"  O  God  of  truth,  whose  living  word 

Upholds  whate'er  hath  breath, 
Look  down  on  thy  creation.  Lord, 
Enslaved  by  sin  and  death. 

"  Set  up  thy  standard,  Lord,  that  we 

Who  claim  a  heavenly  birth 
May  march  with  thee  to  smite  the  lies 
That  vex  thy  groaning  earth. 

"  We  fight  for  truth,  we  fight  for  God, 
Poor  slaves  of  lies  and  sin  ! 
He  who  would  fight  for  thee  on  earth 
Must  first  be  true  within. 

"  Thou  God  of  truth,  for  whom  we  long, 

Thou  who  wilt  hear  our  prayer. 
Do  thine  own  battle  in  our  hearts. 
And  slay  the  falsehood  there. 

"  Still  smite  I  still  burn  !  till  naught  is  left 
But  God's  own  truth  and  love  ; 
Then,  Lord,  as  morning  dew  come  down, 
Rest  on  us  from  above. 


170    THE  CHURCH  AND   MODERN   LIFE 

"Yea,  come  !  thus  tried  as  in  the  fire, 

From  every  lie  set  free, 
Thy  perfect  truth  shall  dwell  in  us 
And  we  shall  live  in  thee." 

It  is  hardly  needful  to  say  that  the  redemp- 
tion of  the  social  order  will  not  be  wrought 
out  without  sacrifice.  "  The  redemption  of 
the  soul  is  costly,"  says  the  Psalmist.  No  man 
is  rescued  from  moral  degradation  and  death 
without  suffering  and  sacrifice.  Those  who  are 
saved  are  more  often  saved  by  the  suffering  of 
others  in  their  behalf  than  by  their  own  suffer- 
ing. But  the  price  of  a  soul  is  apt  to  be  high, 
and  love  is  sometimes  able  to  pay  it. 

The  redemption  of  society  from  the  welter 
of  selfishness  and  brutishness  and  cruelty  into 
which  it  is  now  plunged  will  be  a  costly 
undertaking.  The  church  is  here,  as  Christ's 
representative,  to  take  up  this  work ;  and  it 
must  not  expect  to  accomplish  it  without  suf- 
fering. "  It  is  enough  for  the  disciple  that  he 
be  as  his  Master,  and  the  servant  as  his  Lord." 
If  the  church  is  Christ's  servant,  she  must  not 
expect  to  find  any  better  way  than  his  way  of 
saving  the  world. 

It  is  true,  as  we  have  seen,  that  the  present 
deplorable  conditions  are  due  to  the  failure  of 


SOCIAL  REDEMPTION  171 

the  church  to  enforce  the  Christian  morality. 
The  price  that  she  must  pay  for  the  redemp- 
tion of  society  is  heavy  because  of  her  own 
neglect.  But  it  must  be  paid.  There  is  no 
other  way  of  salvation. 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  church  which 
bears  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  has  come  to 
its  testing  time.  It  finds  itself  in  the  midst 
of  a  society  whose  tendencies  are  downward. 
Mammon  is  on  the  throne ;  the  greed  of  gain 
is  eating  the  heart  out  of  commercial  honor ; 
reputations  are  crumbling ;  confidence  is  rudely 
shaken  ;  the  most  cynical  schemes  for  plunder- 
ing the  multitudes  are  daily  brought  to  light; 
social  classes  stand  over  against  each  other 
distrustful  and  defiant;  the  house  of  mirth 
resounds  with  the  mad  revelry  of  the  wasters, 
while  the  purlieus  are  noisome  with  poverty 
and  vice. 

Can  this  society  be  redeemed  ?  Can  this  all- 
ruling  commercialism  be  held  in  check,  and 
this  reign  of  plunder  be  overthrown,  and  all 
this  seething  selfishness  and  heartlessness  and 
suspicion  be  made  to  give  place  to  good-will 
and  kindness,  to  trust  and  truth,  to  faith  and 
honor  ?  It  will  never  be  done  without  a  vast 
expenditure  of  sacrificial  love.    "This  kind 


172    THE  CHURCH  AND   MODERN  LIFE 

goeth  not  forth  but  by  prayer  and  fasting." 
Is  the  church  ready  for  this  struggle  ?  Is  she 
wiUing  to  put  forth  the  effort  and  pay  the 
cost  which  is  required  for  the  redemption  of 
society  ? 


vin 

THE    NEW   EVANGELISM 

Those  who  have  followed  these  discussions 
from  the  beginning  will  not  be  inclined  to 
hesitate  in  answering  the  question  with  which 
the  last  chapter  closed.  That  society  can  be  re- 
deemed, and  that  the  church  can  and  will  purge 
herself  from  the  things  that  defile  her  beauty 
and  corrupt  her  powers,  and  gird  herself  for 
the  redemptive  work  assigned  her,  is  the  faith 
of  every  loyal  Christian.  The  grievous  fail- 
ures of  the  church  we  cannot  deny  and  must 
not  palliate  ;  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance 
that  she  be  brought  face  to  face  with  them, 
and  be  made  to  see  how  far  short  she  has 
come  of  her  high  calling.  Such  criticism  she 
has  received  from  the  beo'inninij.  The  seven 
churches  of  Asia  were  sharply  called  to  account 
by  the  beloved  disciple ;  their  faithlessness  and 
neglect  were  unflinchingly  brought  home  to 
them.  The  churches  at  Ephesus  and  Sardis 
and  Laodicea  had  as  hard  things  said  about 
them  as  have  been  said  in  these  chapters  of 


174    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

the  churches  of  this  generation,  and  probably 
deserved  them  no  less.  We  cannot  doubt  that 
that  clear-eyed  witness,  if  he  were  confronting 
the  church  of  the  twentieth  century,  would 
be  constrained  to  say  :  "  I  know  thy  works, 
that  thou  hast  a  name  that  thou  livest,  and  art 
dead.  .  .  .  Because  thou  say  est,  I  am  rich 
and  increased  in  goods  and  have  need  of 
nothing ;  and  knowest  not  that  thou  art  the 
wretched  one,  and  miserable,  and  poor,  and 
blind,  and  naked :  I  counsel  thee  to  buy  of  me 
gold  refined  by  fire,  that  thou  mayest  become 
rich;  and  white  garments,  that  thou  mayest 
clothe  thyself,  and  that  the  shame  of  thy 
nakedness  be  not  made  manifest ;  and  eye- 
salve  to  anoint  thine  eyes,  that  thou  mayest 
see.  As  many  as  I  love,  I  reprove  and  chasten ; 
be  zealous  therefore,  and  repent."  In  every 
generation  such  chastisement  has  been  needed ; 
the  need  is  no  greater  to-day  than  in  past 
generations,  and  the  chastening  love  no  less. 
What  Lowell  says  of  this  country,  many  a 
Christian  believer  has  been  constrained  to  say 
of  the  church  :  — 

"  I  loved  her  old  renown,  her  stainless  fame  ; 
What  better  proof  than  that  I  loathed  her  shame." 

But  this  keen  sense  of  her  shortcomings  is 


THE   NEW   EVANGELISM  175 

not  inconsistent  with  an  unfaltering  faith  in 
the  recovery  of  her  integrity  and  in  her  final 
triumph.  And  those  who  have  read  the  history 
of  the  Christian  church  with  sympathetic  vis- 
ion can  hardly  doubt  that  her  brightest  days 
are  still  before  her. 

For  while  it  must  be  admitted  that  she  has 
neglected,  hitherto,  her  great  work  of  social 
redemption,  it  cannot  be  said  that  she  is  more 
nesflectful  of  it  now  than  she  has  been  in 
past  years ;  the  truth  is  that  she  is  nearer  to 
the  recognition  of  it  to-day  than  she  has  ever 
been.  Derelict  as  she  is  to  her  primary  obliga- 
tion, it  must  yet  be  said  that  a  consciousness 
of  that  dereliction  is  beginning  to  make  her 
uneasy,  and  that  has  never  before  been  true 
of  any  large  portion  of  her  membership.  Since 
the  earliest  centuries  the  possibility  of  trans- 
forming the  social  order  by  purely  spiritual 
influences  has  scarcely  dawned  upon  her.  So 
long  as  society  was  feudalistic  or  aristocratic, 
the  problem  seemed  to  be  beyond  her  reach ; 
she  might  hope  to  improve  society,  by  incul- 
cating kindness  and  charity,  but  hardly  to 
reconstruct  it  upon  new  foundations. 

The  advent  of  democracy  has  brought  home 
to   her   her   social   responsibihties.   Here   in 


176     THE  CHURCH   AND  MODERN  LIFE 

America,  more  than  anywhere  else,  the  nature 
of  her  social  obligation  has  been  revealed. 
Here  the  fact  cannot  be  disguised  that  the 
people  are  the  sovereigns,  and  that  social  as 
well  as  political  relations  are  under  their  direct 
control.  The  sovereign  people  have  pledged 
themselves  one  to  another,  in  their  constitu- 
tion, to  refrain  from  establishing,  by  law,  any 
form  of  religion ;  but  they  have  also  cove- 
nanted together  to  promote  the  common  wel- 
fare. This  puts  the  responsibility  for  social 
conditions  upon  the  whole  people,  and  the 
Christian  people  are  among  them.  They  can- 
not avoid  the  obligation  to  apply  Christian 
principles  to  social  conditions.  Power  is  theirs 
to  be  used  in  Christ's  name  and  for  the  pro- 
motion of  his  kingdom.  To  see  that  society 
is  furnished  with  right  ruling  ideas,  and 
organized  on  Christian  principles,  is  their  main 
business.  And  while  there  are  many  by  whom 
this  obligation  is  still  but  feebly  felt,  yet 
there  is  a  goodly  number  of  those  in  whose 
minds  the  leaven  is  working,  and  to  whom  the 
nature  of  the  kingdom  that  Jesus  came  to 
establish  is  being  clearly  revealed.  That  this 
number  is  destined  to  grow  very  rapidly  we 
may  reasonably  hope. 


THE   NEW    EVANGELISM  177 

The  present  situation  is  so  clearly  outlined 
by  a  recent  writer  that  we  may  welcome  a 
liberal  quotation :  — 

"The  first  apostolate  of  Christianity  was 
born  from  a  deep  fellow-feeling  for  social 
misery,  and  from  the  consciousness  of  a  great 
historical  opportunity.  Jesus  saw  the  peas- 
antry of  Galilee  following  him  about  with 
their  poverty  and  their  diseases,  like  shepherd- 
less  sheep  that  have  been  scattered  and  har- 
ried by  beasts  of  prey,  and  his  heart  had 
compassion  on  them.  He  felt  that  the  harvest 
was  ripe  but  there  were  few  to  reap  it.  Past 
history  had  come  to  its  culmination,  but  there 
were  few  who  understood  the  situation  and 
were  prepared  to  cope  with  it.  He  bade  his 
disciples  to  pray  for  laborers  for  the  harvest, 
and  then  made  them  answer  their  own  prayers 
by  sending  them  out  two  by  two  to  proclaim 
the  kingdom  of  God.  That  was  the  beginning 
of  the  world-wide  mission  of  Christianity. 

"  The  situation  is  repeated  on  a  vaster  scale 
to-day.  If  Jesus  stood  to-day  amid  our  modern 
life,  with  that  outlook  on  the  condition  of  all 
humanity  which  observation  and  travel  and 
the  press  would  spread  before  him,  and  with 
the  same  heart  of  humanity  beating  in  him, 


178    THE   CHURCH   AND  MODERN   LIFE 

he  would  create  a  new  apostolate  to  meet  the 
new  needs  in  a  new  harvest  time  of  history. 

"  To  any  one  who  knows  the  sluggishness  of 
humanity  to  good,  the  impregnable  intrench- 
ments  of  vested  wrongs,  and  the  long  reaches 
of  time  needed  from  one  milestone  of  pro- 
gress to  the  next,  the  task  of  setting  up  a 
Christian  social  order  in  this  modern  world  of 
ours  seems  like  a  fair  and  futile  dream.  Yet, 
in  fact,  it  is  not  one  tithe  as  hopeless  as  when 
Jesus  set  out  to  do  it.  When  he  told  his  dis- 
ciples, '  Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth ;  ye  are  the 
light  of  the  world,'  he  expressed  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  great  historic  mission  to  the  whole 
of  humanity.  Yet  it  was  a  Nazarene  carpenter 
speaking  to  a  group  of  Nazarene  peasants  and 
fishermen.  Under  the  circumstances  at  that 
time  it  was  an  utterance  of  the  most  daring 
faith,  —  faith  in  himself,  faith  in  them,  faith 
in  what  he  was  putting  into  them,  faith  in 
faith.  Jesus  failed  and  was  crucified,  first  his 
body  by  his  enemies  and  then  his  spirit  by  his 
friends ;  but  that  failure  was  such  an  amazing 
success  that  to-day  it  takes  an  effort  on  our 
part  to  realize  that  it  required  any  faith  on  his 
part  to  inaugurate  the  kingdom  of  God  and 
to  send  out  his  apostolate. 


THE  NEW   EVANGELISM  179 

"  To-day,  as  Jesus  looks  out  upon  humanity, 
his  spirit  must  leap  to  see  the  souls  responsive 
to  his  call.  They  are  sown  broadcast  through 
humanity,  legions  of  them.  The  harvest  field 
is  no  longer  deserted.  All  about  us  we  hear 
the  elans:  of  the  whetstone  and  the  rush  of  the 
blades  through  the  grain  and  the  shout  of  the 
reapers.  With  all  our  faults  and  our  slothful- 
ness,  we  modern  men  in  many  ways  are  more 
on  a  level  with  the  mind  of  Jesus  than  any 
generation  that  has  gone  before.  If  that  first 
apostolate  was  able  to  remove  mountains  by 
faith,  such  an  apostolate  as  Christ  could  now 
summon  might  change  the  face  of  the  earth."  ^ 

The  time  is  ripe  for  such  an  apostolate. 
The  old  type  of  evangelism  has  plainly  had 
its  day.  Strenuous  efforts  are  put  forth  to  re- 
vive it,  but  their  success  is  meagre.  It  is  easy 
by  expending  much  money  in  advertising,  by 
organizing  a  great  choir,  and  employing  the 
services  of  gifted  and  earnest  men,  to  draw 
large  congregations;  but  the  great  mass  of 
those  who  attend  these  services  are  church 
members,  —  the  outside  multitude  is  scarcely 

>  Rauschenbusch,  Chmtianity  and  the  Social  CrLiis,  pp. 
414-416.  The  volume  is  one  that  no  intelligent  student  of 
present-day  Christianity  can  afiford  to  neglect. 


180    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

touched  by  them.  Those  who  are  gathered 
into  the  church  in  these  meetings  are  mainly 
children  from  the  Sunday  schools.  There  may 
be  evangelists  who,  by  an  extravagant  and 
grotesque  sensationalism,  contrive  to  get  the 
attention  of  the  non-churchgoers,  and  who 
are  able  to  report  considerable  additions  to 
the  churches;  but  the  permanence  of  these 
gains  is  not  yet  shown,  and  we  have  no  means 
of  enumerating  the  thousands  who,  by  such 
clownish  exhibitions,  are  driven  in  disgust 
from  the  churches. 

The  failure  of  the  modern  evangelism  is  not 
conjectural :  the  year-books  show  it.  The 
growth  of  membership  in  several  of  our  lead- 
ing denominations  has  either  ceased  or  is 
greatly  retarded;  the  Sunday  schools  and 
the  young  people's  societies  report  decreas- 
ing numbers;  the  benevolent  contributions 
are  either  waning,  or  increasing  at  a  rate  far 
less  than  that  of  the  growth  of  wealth  in  the 
membership.  It  is  idle  to  blink  these  condi- 
tions ;  we  must  face  them  and  find  out  what 
they  mean.  This  slackening  and  shrinkage  is 
not  a  fact  of  long  standing  ;  it  represents  only 
the  tendencies  of  the  past  twenty  years. 

We  hear  rather  frantic  demands  for  a  return 


THE  NEW   EVANGELISM  181 

to  the  old  methods  of  evangelism,  but  that  is 
a  foolish  cry  :  — 

"  The  mill  will  never  grind 
With  the  water  that  is  past." 

The  old  appeal,  which  fixed  attention  upon  the 
interest  of  the  individual,  has  lost  its  power. 
It  is  not  possible  to  stir  the  average  human 
being  of  this  generation,  as  the  average  hu- 
man being  of  fifty  years  ago  was  stirred,  by 
pictures  of  the  terrors  of  hell  and  the  felici- 
ties of  heaven.  These  conceptions  have  far 
less  influence  over  human  lives  than  once  they 
had,  —  less,  doubtless,  than  they  ought  to 
have;  for  there  are  realities  under  these  sym- 
bols which  we  cannot  afford  to  ignore.  But  the 
fundamental  defect  of  that  old  appeal  was  the 
emphasis  which  it  placed  upon  self-interest. 
"  Look  out  for  yourself  !  "  was  its  constant  ad- 
monition. "Think  of  the  perils  that  threaten, 
of  the  blisses  that  invite  !  Do  not  risk  the 
pain ;  do  not  miss  the  blessedness !  "  To-day 
this  does  not  seem  a  wholly  worthy  motive. 
At  any  rate,  it  is  below  the  highest.  Men  feel 
that  the  relimon  of  Christ  has  a  kroner  mean- 
ing  than  this.  A  presentation  of  the  gospel 
which  makes  the  welfare  of  the  individual 
central    does   not   grip    the    conscience    and 


182    THE   CHURCH   AND  MODERN  LIFE 

arouse  the  emotions  as  once  it  did.  For  the 
conception  of  human  welfare  as  social  rather 
than  individual  has  become  common;  that 
"  great  fund  of  altruistic  feeling,"  which,  as 
Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  tells  us,  is  the  motive 
power  of  all  our  social  reforms,  is  constantly 
stirring  in  human  hearts  ;  and  although  there 
are  few  whose  lives  are  wholly  ruled  by  this 
motive,  there  are  fewer  still  who  do  not  recog- 
nize it  as  the  commanding  motive ;  and  a  re- 
ligious appeal  which  is  based  upon  considera- 
tions essentially  egoistic  does  not,  therefore, 
awaken  any  large  response  in  human  hearts. 

If  the  church  wishes  to  regain  her  hold 
upon  the  people,  she  must  learn  to  speak  to  the 
highest  that  is  in  them.  A  man's  religion  must 
consecrate  his  ideals.  A  religion  which  invites 
him  to  live  on  a  lower  plane  than  the  highest 
on  which  his  thought  travels  cannot  win  his 
respect.  And  therefore  the  new  evangelism 
must  learn  to  find  its  motive  not  in  self-love, 
no  matter  how  refined,  but  in  the  love  that 
identifies  the  self  with  the  neighbor.  It  must 
bring  home  to  the  individual  the  truth  which 
he  already  dimly  knows,  that  his  personal  re- 
demption is  bound  up  with  the  redemption  of 
the  society  to  which  he  belongs ;  that  he  can- 


THE  NEW  EVANGELISM  183 

not  be  saved  except  as  he  becomes  a  savior 
of  others ;  nay,  that  the  one  central  sin  from 
which  he  needs  to  be  saved  is  indifference 
to  the  welfare  of  others,  and  a  willingness  to 
prosper  at  their  expense. 

The  time  has  come  for  the  church  to  take 
an  entirely  new  attitude  in  offering  men  the 
gospel.  It  has  been  too  well  content  with  press- 
ing the  personal  advantages  of  religion,  with 
trying  to  lure  them  into  discipleship  with 
baits  addressed  to  their  selfishness.  It  has  been 
inventing  attractions  of  all  sorts,  —  fine  build- 
ings, sumptuous  upholstery  and  decorations, 
artistic  music,  brilliant  oratory  ;  it  has  thought 
it  possible  to  enlist  men  by  pleasing  their  tastes 
and  gratifying  their  sensibilities.  So  far  has 
this  gone  that  the  average  churchgoer  con- 
sciously justifies  his  presence  in  church  or  his 
absence  from  it  on  the  ground  of  pleasure.  If 
it  pleases  him  enough,  he  goes ;  if  not,  he 
reads  the  Sunday  paper  or  goes  out  with  his 
automobile.  It  is  a  simple  question  of  enjoy- 
ment. 

The  response  of  those  invited  shows  the 
nature  of  the  invitation.  It  indicates  that  the 
church  has  been  putting  a  great  deal  of  em- 
phasis on  the  attractions  which  it  has  to  offer. 


184    THE   CHURCH   AND  MODERN  LIFE 

We  can  hardly  imagine  such  replies  to  be  made 
by  those  who  were  invited  to  listen  to  the 
preaching  of  Jesus  or  his  apostles.  They  did 
not  suppose  that  it  -was  a  question  of  enter- 
tainment that  they  were  considering.  They 
knew  that  it  was  a  summons  to  service  and 
sacrifice.  That,  beyond  all  doubt,  was  the 
nature  of  the  appeal  of  the  church  in  those 
earliest  centuries,  when  it  was  marching  over 
Asia  and  Europe,  conquering  and  to  conquer. 
It  was  not  baiting  men  with  soft  cushions  and 
pictured  windows,  with  coddlings  and  comfits ; 
it  was  calling  them  to  hardship  and  warfare, 
to  ignominy  and  ostracism ;  the  words  of  the 
Master  to  which  it  gave  emphasis  were  not 
mere  metaphors :  "If  any  man  will  come  after 
me,  let  him  deny  himself  and  take  up  his 
cross  and  follow  me." 

The  call  of  the  cross  has  never  failed. 
The  power  of  God  and  the  wisdom  of  God  are 
in  it.  And  it  is  time  for  the  church  to  take 
up  this  heroic  note  and  sound  it  forth  with 
new  power.  This  is  the  new  evangehsm  for 
which  the  world  is  waiting.  It  is  not  a  call  to 
be  "  carried  to  the  skies  on  flowery  beds  of 
ease ; "  it  is  not  an  invitation  to  the  sentimental 
soul  to  "  sit  and  sing  herself  away  to  ever- 


THE  NEW   EVANGELISM  185 

lasting  bliss ; "  it  is  the  clarion  of  battle  ;  it  is 
the  challenge  to  an  enterprise  which  means 
struo^trle  and  sufferinfr  and  self-denial. 
-^  The  redemption  of  society  is  the  objective 
of  the  new  evangelism.  How  vast  an  under- 
taking this  is  was  indicated  in  the  last  chapter. 
Let  us  look  at  it  a  little  more  in  detail.  How 
much  does  it  signify,  here  and  now,  in  the 
United  States  of  America  ? 

It  means,  first,  the  reconciliation  of  races. 
One  thing  that  must  be  done  is  to  take  this 
chaotic  mass  of  dissimilar,  discordant,  suspi- 
cious, antipathetic  racial  elements  and  blend 
them  into  unity  and  brotherhood.  The  first 
Christians  had  a  task  of  this  nature  on  their 
hands ;  they  had  to  bring  together  in  one  fel- 
lowship Jews  and  Gentiles.  But  that  was  a 
pastime  compared  with  the  herculean  labor  in- 
trusted to  us,  —  the  bringing  together  of  whites 
and  blacks,  of  Caucasians  and  Mongolians, 
of  scores  of  groups  divided  by  the  barriers 
of  language,  of  religion,  of  custom,  and  fus- 
ing them  into  one  nationality.  No  task  of 
the  same  dimensions  was  ever  undertaken  by 
any  people ;  but  this  is  ours,  and  we  must  per- 
form it.  It  is  the  task  of  the  nation  ;  but  the 
church  of  Jesus  Christ  is  charged  with  the 


186    THE   CHURCH   AND   MODERN  LIFE 

business  of  furnishing  the  sentiments  and 
ideas  by  which  alone  it  may  be  accomplished. 

It  means,  secondly,  the  pacification  of  in- 
dustry. The  contending  hosts  of  capital  and 
labor  must  be  brought  together,  and  con- 
strained to  cease  from  their  warfare  and  be- 
come friends  and  cooperators.  It  is  absurd  to 
suppose  that  the  war  of  the  industrial  classes 
can  continue  to  be  waged,  as  at  present,  each 
seeking  to  overpower  the  other.  Such  a  con- 
dition of  things  is  simply  irrational.  All  war- 
fare is  illogical  and  unnatural.  Human  beings 
are  not  made  to  live  together  on  any  such 
terms.  They  are  made  to  be  friends  and  help- 
ers of  one  another.  The  elimination  of  war  is 
the  next  step  in  industrial  evolution.  And  it 
is  the  business  of  the  church  of  Jesus  Christ 
to  speak  the  reconciling  word.  She  has  the 
word  to  speak,  and  when  she  utters  it  with 
authority  it  will  be  heard. 

It  means,  thirdly,  the  moralization  of  busi- 
ness. The  trouble  with  business  is  simply  cov- 
etousness.  The  insatiable  greed  of  gain  is  the 
source  of  all  the  dishonesties,  the  oppres- 
sions, the  spoliations,  the  trickeries,  the  frauds, 
the  adulterations,  the  cutthroat  competitions, 
the  financial  piracies,  the  swindling  schemes, 


THE   NEW   EVANGELISM  187 

—  all  the  abuses  and  mischiefs  which  infest 
the  world  of  commerce  and  finance.  Against 
all  these  forms  of  evil  the  church  must  bear 
her  testimony ;  but  the  root  from  which 
they  all  grow  is  the  love  of  money,  and  it  is 
this  central  and  seminal  sin  of  modern  civil- 
ization that  the  church  must  assail  with  all 
the  weapons  of  the  spiritual  warfare.  "  Cov- 
etousness  is  idolatry  "  —  so  St.  Paul  testifies ; 
and  a  grosser  or  more  debasing  idolatry  has 
never  appeared  on  earth  than  the  worship  of 
material  gain.  Unless  the  bonds  of  that  super- 
stition can  be  broken,  the  race  must  sink  into 
degradation.  It  is  the  one  deadly  enemy  of 
mankind.  And  the  church  of  Jesus  Christ  is 
called  to  lead  in  the  battle  with  this  foe. 
Against  no  other  social  evil  was  the  testimony 
of  Jesus  so  trenchant  and  uncompromising. 
Nothing  more  clearly  evinces  his  unerring 
vision  of  moral  realities  than  his  judgment 
upon  this  encroaching  passion.  In  his  day  it 
was  an  evil  almost  negligible  compared  with 
what  it  is  to-day.  It  was  because  he  fore- 
saw the  conditions  which  prevail  to-day  that 
his  words  were  so  hot  against  the  rule  of 
Mammon.  The  church  is  face  to  face  with 
the  danger  which  he  discerned,  and  she  must  ""^ 


188     THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN   LIFE 

meet  it  in  his  spirit  and  with  the  energy  of 
his  passion.  To  make  men  see  the  hatefulness 
and  loathsomeness  of  this  greed  of  gain  is  the 
first  duty  of  the  church.  When  that  is  accom- 
plished the  worst  evils  of  the  business  realm 
will  disappear. 
J  It  means,  fourthly,  the  extirpation  of  social 
vice.  When  covetousness  is  conquered,  the 
procuring  cause  of  much  of  this  kind  of  evil 
will  be  cut  up  by  the  roots.  The  greed  of 
gain  is  the  motive  which  breeds  and  propa- 
gates social  vice.  But  there  are  animal  pro- 
pensities to  which  these  incitements  make 
their  appeal ;  and  some  way  must  be  found  of 
quickening  the  nobler  affections,  so  that  the 
spirit  shall  rule  the  flesh  and  not  be  in  bond- 
age to  it.  To  fill  the  thoughts  and  wishes  of 
men  with  something  better  worth  while  than 
the  joys  of  animalism  is  the  radical  remedy 
for  these  degradations.  And  the  church  ought 
to  be  able  to  supply  this  remedy. 

The  redemption  of  society  means,  in  the 
fifth  place,  the  purification  of  politics.  The 
dethronement  of  Mammon  will  go  a  long  way 
toward  this  also ;  most  of  the  corruptions 
of  our  political  life  spring  from  the  love  of 
money.  Graft  is  the  first-born  of  covetous- 


THE   NEW   EVANGELISM  189 

ness.  But  the  love  of  power  also  plays  a  part 
in  the  debauchery  of  citizenship ;  and  the  cen- 
tral sin  of  using  men  as  means  to  our  ends 
is  exhibited  here  on  a  stupendous  scale.  This 
is  the  vocation  of  the  boss  and  the  briber  and 
the  political  machinist;  and  a  deadlier  way 
of  destroying  manhood  it  would  be  hard  to 
find.  It  is  not  only  the  interest  of  other  indi- 
viduals, but  the  interest  of  the  whole  commun- 
ity that  the  corrupt  pohtician  sacrifices  upon 
the  altar  of  cupidity  or  ambition ;  and  when  a 
man  has  learned  to  turn  the  one  great  privi- 
lege of  service  and  sacrifice  which  citizenship 
offers  into  an  opportunity  of  private  gain,  he 
has  sunk  about  as  low  as  man  can  go.  What 
more  urgent  task  has  the  church  upon  her 
hands  than  that  of  making  men  see  the  treach- 
ery and  infamy  of  this  kind  of  conduct  ?  And 
unless  men  can  be  made  to  see  it  and  feel  it, 
what  hope  is  there  for  free  government  ?  Can 
anybody  imagine  that  democracy  can  long 
endure  if  the  ruling  motive  of  the  citizen  in 
his  relation  to  the  commonwealth  is  a  purpose 
to  get  as  much  out  of  it  as  he  can  and  give  it 
as  Uttle  as  he  can  ?  All  political  reforms  which 
leave  the  citizen  in  this  state  of  mind  are  futile. 
There  is  no  salvation  for  a  democracy  which 


190    THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN  LIFE 

does  not  change  the  direction  of  the  motive 
in  the  heart  of  the  individual  citizen.  And 
this  is  the  business  of  the  church.  Without 
this,  social  redemption  is  impossible,  and  there 
is  no  other  agency  which  even  proposes  to 
accomplish  this. 

And,  finally,  the  redemption  of  society 
means  the  simplification  of  life.  Here,  per- 
haps, we  strike  more  nearly  than  anywhere 
else  at  the  heart  of  the  whole  problem.  The 
bottom  trouble  of  the  world  in  which  we  live 
is  the  enormous  over-multiplication  of  our 
wants.  In  the  multitude  of  ministrations  to  our 
senses,  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  overlaid  and 
smothered.  Jesus  said  that  a  man's  life  con- 
sists not  in  the  abundance  of  the  things  which 
he  possesses ;  it  is  this  elementary  truth  which 
the  world  has  ceased  to  believe.  For  the  most 
part  our  life  is  in  our  things ;  our  happiness 
depends  on  them;  our  desires  do  not  often 
rise  above  them. 

The  complexity,  the  artificiality,  the  profu- 
sion of  our  belongings  absorbs  the  larger  part 
of  our  interest.  The  energies  of  invention  are 
mainly  directed  to  the  creation  of  new  wants. 
As  the  resources  of  the  earth  are  developed, 
life  takes  on  an  accumulating  burden  of  cares 


THE   NEW   EVANGELISM  191 

and  conventions  and  superfluities.  We  read, 
with  a  wonder  which  is  a  thinly  disguised 
admiration,  the  stories  of  the  extravagances 
of  the  people  of  the  whirlpool,  but  most  of 
us  are  jogging  along  after  them,  wishing  that 
we  could  get  into  the  swim  ourselves.  Our 
houses  are  cluttered  with  adornments ;  our  so- 
cial functions  are  spending  matches ;  our  feasts 
invite  to  satiation ;  our  funerals  are  exhibi- 
tions of  extravajrance.  This  thino*  has  been 
growing  by  leaps  and  bounds,  and  the  time 
has  come  when  we  are  fairly  swamped  by  the 
abundance  of  the  things  which  we  possess. 
Nay,  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  we  possess  this 
abundance ;  it  possesses  us  :  — 

"  Things  are  in  the  saddle 
And  ride  mankind." 

In  recent  years  the  cry  has  been  rising  for 
a  simpler  life.  It  is  a  voice  in  the  wilderness ; 
in  the  din  and  clatter  of  our  complex  civiliza- 
tion it  seems  faint  and  far  off,  but  it  is  mak- 
ing itself  heard;  it  begins  to  be  evident  to 
all  thoughtful  people  that  we  must  somehow 
manage  to  get  away  from  these  entanglements 
of  sense  and  live  a  freer  life.  In  these  arti- 
ficialities and  extravagances  the  soul  is  en- 
feebled and  belittled,  and  the  national  vigor 


192    THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN   LIFE 

is  lost.  If  we  want  to  save  our  nation  from 
decay  we  must  learn  to  live  a  simpler  life. 
And  this  change  will  not  be  wrought  out  by 
evolutionary  processes;  it  means  revolution 
rather;  not  by  violence,  we  may  trust,  but 
certainly  by  choice,  by  effort,  by  struggle 
and  resistance  we  shall  turn  back  these  tides 
of  materialism,  and  lead  the  current  of  our 
national  life  into  safer  channels. 

We  are  not  going  to  strip  our  lives  bare  of 
beauty,  or  to  consign  ourselves  to  the  meagre- 
ness  of  the  anchoretic  regimen;  we  shall  have 
beautiful  homes  and  abundant  pleasures ;  but 
we  must  learn  to  make  our  spiritual  inter- 
ests supreme,  and  not  suffer  our  thought  to 
be  blurred  and  our  faith  enfeebled  and  our 
love  stifled  in  the  atmosphere  of  modern 
materialism. 

Such,  then,  are  some  of  the  phases  of  that 
great  work  of  social  redemption  which  now 
confronts  us.  Other  aspects  of  the  work,  not 
less  serious,  might  be  presented,  but  these 
are  some  of  the  outstanding  needs  of  mod- 
ern society.  Certainly  it  is  a  tremendous  work. 
To  reconcile  hostile  and  suspicious  races;  to 
pacify  industrial  classes ;  to  moralize  business  ; 
to  extirpate  social  vice ;   to  purify  politics ; 


THE   NEW   EVANGELISM  193 

to  simplify  life ;  —  all  this  is  au  enterprise  so 
vast  that  we  may  well  be  appalled  by  the 
thought  of  undertaking  it.  But  this,  and  no- 
thing less  than  this,  is  the  business  which  the 
church  has  in  hand.  For  which  of  these  tasks 
is  she  not  responsible  ?  From  which  of  them 
would  she  dare  ask  to  be  excused  ?  To  what 
other  agency  can  she  think  of  intrusting 
any  of  them?  Nay,  this  is  her  proper  and 
peculiar  work.  For  this  is  she  sent  into  the 
world. 

In  truth,  the  one  thing  that  the  church  needs 
to-day  is  to  envisage  this  task,  —  to  take  in 
its  tremendous  dimensions;  to  comprehend  the 
overpowering  magnitude  of  the  work  that  is 
expected  of  her.  It  is  this  revelation  that  will 
rouse  her.  Never  before,  in  all  her  history, 
has  such  a  disclosure  of  her  responsibility 
been  made  to  her.  And  the  enormity  of  the 
obligation  will  set  her  thinking.  It  will  dawn 
upon  her  after  a  little,  that  it  is  for  just  such 
tasks  that  she  is  called  and  commissioned  ; 
that  the  achievement  of  the  impossible  is  the 
very  thing  that  she  is  always  expected  to  do ; 
that  the  strength  on  which  she  leans  is  om- 
nipotence ;  that  she  can  do  all  things  througli 
Christ  who  strengtheueth   her.    She  will  see 


194    THE   CHURCH   AND  MODERN  LIFE 

and  understand  that  her  progress  is  not  made 
by  seeking  the  hne  of  least  resistance  :  some 
such  worldly  wisdom  as  this  has  been  her  un- 
doing. She  will  learn  that  it  is  only  when  she 
undertakes  the  greatest  things  that  she  finds 
her  resources  equal  to  her  needs. 

This  is  the  heroic  note  of  the  new  evangel- 
ism. The  work  of  making  a  better  world  of 
this  is  a  tremendous  work,  but  it  can  be  done. 
It  can  be  done,  because  it  is  commanded.  If 
there  is  a  God  in  heaven,  what  ought  to  be 
done  can  be  done.  To  doubt  that  is  to  deny 
him.  And  there  is  one  way  of  doing  it,  and 
that  is  Christ's  way.  For  all  this  manifold, 
herculean  labor  on  which  we  have  been  look- 
ing, there  is  no  wisdom  comparable  with  his. 
He  said  that  he  came  to  save  the  world,  and 
he  is  going  to  save  it.  He  has  waited  long, 
but  he  knows  how  to  wait.  The  day  of  his 
triumph  is  drawing  near.  This  world  is  going 
to  be  redeemed.  This  social  order,  so  full  of 
strife  and  confusion,  of  cruelty  and  oppres- 
sion, of  misery  and  sorrow,  is  going  to  be 
transformed,  and  the  love  of  Christ  shed 
abroad  in  the  hearts  of  men  will  transform  it. 
We  are  not  going  to  wait  another  thousand 
years  for  our  millennium ;  we  are  going  to 


THE  NEW  EVANGELISM  195 

have  it  here  and  now.  This  is  the  gospel  of 
the  new  evangelism  which  it  has  taken  the 
church  a  long  time  to  learn,  but  which  she  is 
now  getting  ready  to  proclaim  with  demon- 
stration of  the  spirit  and  with  power. 

We  must  not  hide  from  ourselves  the  fact 
that  some  great  changes  will  need  to  take 
place  in  her  own  life  before  she  can  give  effect 
to  this  o^reat  evangel.  She  must  heal  her  divi- 
sions,  and  fling  away  her  encumbering  tradi- 
tions, and  greatly  deepen  her  faith  in  her  Lord 
and  Leader.  Above  all,  she  must  simplify  her 
own  life.  She  cannot  bear  witness,  as  she 
must,  against  the  deadly  influences  of  our 
modern  materialism,  until  she  utterly  clears 
herself  of  all  complicity  with  it.  This  means, 
in  many  quarters,  a  radical  change  in  her 
administration. 

When  the  church  has  thus  envisaged  her 
task,  and  comprehended  its  magnitude,  and 
when,  with  her  heart  on  fire  with  the  great- 
ness and  glory  of  it,  she  has  laid  aside  every 
weight  and  the  sins  that  so  easily  beset  her, 
and  has  girded  herself  with  the  truth  as  it  is 
in  Jesus,  and  has  set  the  silver  trumpet  to  her 
lips,  she  will  have  a  gospel  to  proclaim,  to 
which  the  world  will  listen. 


196    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

It  will  tell  the  world,  as  it  has  always  told 
the  world,  of  forgiveness  and  hope,  of  com- 
fort and  peace,  of  the  help  and  guidance  that 
comes  to  the  troubled  soul  in  believing  in 
Jesus.  It  will  speak,  as  it  has  always  spoken, 
of  the  rest  that  remaineth,  and  of  the  great 
joys  and  companionships  of  the  eternal  future. 
But  it  will  have  something  more  than  this  to 
tell. 

The  kingdoms  of  this  world  —  this  will 
be  its  message  —  are  becoming  the  kingdoms 
of  our  Lord  and  of  his  Christ.  It  is  not  an 
event  to  be  awaited,  but  to  be  realized,  here 
and  now.  Nothing  is  needed  but  that  men 
should  believe  the  word  of  Jesus  Christ  and 
live  by  it.  We  do  believe  it,  and  we  mean  to 
show^  our  faith  by  our  works.  We  believe  that 
by  simply  living  together  as  Jesus  has  taught 
us  to  live,  we  can  make  this  world  so  much  bet- 
ter than  it  now  is,  that  men  shall  think  heaven 
has  come  down  to  earth.  We  believe  that  the 
race  question  and  the  labor  question  and  the 
trust  question  and  the  liquor  question  and 
the  graft  question  and  all  the  other  questions 
will  find  a  speedy  solution  when  men  have 
learned  to  walk  in  the  way  of  Jesus.  And  we 
call  you  to  come  and  walk  with  us  in  that  way. 


THE  NEW   EVANGELISM  197 

It  is  not  a  smooth  and  thornless  way.  It 
is  a  toilsome  and  painful  way.  It  is  the  way 
of  the  cross.  It  means  hardship  and  struggle 
and  sufferinof.  Such  intrenched  and  ingrained 
iniquities  as  now  infest  our  society  will  not  be 
overcome  without  conflict.  We  are  not  calling 
you  to  a  pastime.  We  are  not  offering  you 
riches  or  honors  or  sensual  joys.  We  are  call- 
ing you  to  service  and  to  sacrifice.  But  we  are 
going  to  build  here  in  this  world  the  king- 
dom of  heaven.  We  know  that  it  can  be 
done :  we  know  how  to  do  it,  and  the  glori- 
ous thing  we  have  to  tell  you  is  that  you  can 
have  a  share  in  it.  Look  forward  with  us  to 
the  day  when  — 

"  Natiou  with  nation,  land  with  land, 
Unarmed  shall  live  as  comrades  free. 
In  every  heart  and  brain  shall  throb 
The  pulse  of  one  fraternity  ; 

"  New  arts  shall  bloom,  of  loftier  mould, 
And  mightier  music  thrill  the  skies. 
And  every  life  shall  be  a  song 
When  all  the  earth  is  paradise,  "  — 

and  come  and  help  us  to  bring  that  glad  time. 
The  Leader  whom  we  follow  knows  the  way, 
and  the  future  belongs  to  Him. 

That  is  the  message  of  the  new  evangel- 


198     THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

ism,  and  when  the  church  learns  to  speak  it 
with  conviction,  and  to  make  it  good  in  her 
life,  she  will  find  that  the  gospel  has  a  power 
that  she  has  never  even  imagined  it  to  possess. 


IX 

THE   NEW   LEADEK8HIP 

These  discussions  have  failed  of  their  purpose 
if  they  have  not  made  a  few  things  clear.  Let 
us  restate  them  :  — 

1.  The  roots  of  religion  are  in  human  na- 
ture. It  is  a  fact  as  central  and  all-pervasive 
in  the  social  realm  as  gravitation  is  in  the 
physical  realm.  It  is  no  more  hkely  to  become 
antiquated  or  obsolete  than  oxygen  or  sun- 
shine. It  is  an  interest  which  no  intelligent 
person  can  afford  to  ignore. 

2.  Like  every  other  living  thing,  religion 
grows.  It  is  not  outside  the  sphere  of  opera- 
tion of  Him  who  said,  "  Behold !  I  make  all 
things  new  ! "  It  is  subject,  continually,  to  his 
wise  economy  of  renewal. 

3.  Our  rehgion  is  Christianity.  With  the 
other  religions  of  the  race  it  is  destined  to  be 
brought  into  closer  and  closer  comparison 
and  competition,  and  that  religion  will  sur- 
vive and  become  universal  which  most  per- 
fectly explains  the  universe  and  provides  for 


200    THE   CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

the  wants  of  the  human  soul.  All  the  indica- 
tions are  that  the  religion  which  survives  will 
include  the  essential  elements  of  Christianity. 

4.  All  religions  are  rooted  in  the  social 
nature  of  man,  but  Christianity,  more  than 
any  other,  is  a  social  religion.  It  depends 
for  its  culture  and  propagation  upon  the  so- 
cial forces.  Some  form  of  social  organization, 
like  the  church,  is  necessary  to  the  life  of  re- 
ligion. Worship,  to  be  sane  and  salutary,  must 
be  social ;  and  the  life  of  Christianity  can  find 
expression  only  in  such  cooperations  as  those 
for  which  the  church  provides. 

5.  As  the  life  of  religion  is  nurtured  in 
social  worship  and  service,  so  its  fruit  is  gath- 
ered in  the  transformation  of  society.  The 
primary  function  of  the  church  is  the  Christ- 
ianization  of  the  social  order.  The  business 
of  the  church  is  to  save  the  world  by  establish- 
ing here  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

6.  The  church  has  very  imperfectly  per- 
formed this  function.  It  has  but  dimly  dis- 
cerned and  but  feebly  grasped  the  social  aims 
of  Jesus.  It  has  tried  to  do  a  great  many  other 
things,  some  of  them  good  things;  but  the 
one  thing  it  was  sent  to  do  it  has  largely  left 
undone. 


THE  NEW   LEADERSHIP  201 

7.  A  new  reformation  is  therefore  called  for, 
and  that  reformation  must  accomplish  what  the 
reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  failed  to 
accomplish,  —  the  restoration  of  the  social 
teachings  of  Jesus  to  their  proper  rank  and 
dignity.  As  the  reformation  of  the  sixteenth 
century  brought  the  individual  to  Christ  as  a 
personal  Saviour,  so  the  reformation  of  the 
twentieth  century  must  bring  society  to  Christ 
as  a  social  Saviour,  and  must  make  men  see 
that  there  is  no  way  of  living  together  but 
his  way. 

8.  The  church  is  therefore  called  to  the  re- 
demption of  society.  But  the  work  of  redemp- 
tion to  which  it  is  called  is  not  a  reconstruc- 
tion of  economic  or  political  machinery ;  it  is 
the  quickening  of  the  social  conscience,  and 
the  reenthronement  of  justice  and  love  in  the 
place  of  selfishness  and  strife  as  the  ruling 
principles  of  human  society. 

9.  For  the  redemption  of  society  a  new  evan- 
gelism is  needed.  The  new  evangeHsm  will 
not  emphasize  the  interest  of  the  individual ; 
it  will  rather  emphasize  the  truth  that  the 
individual  can  only  be  saved  when  he  identi- 
fies his  own  welfare  with  the  welfare  of  his' 
fellow  men.  And  it  will  not  try  to  win  men 


202    THE  CHURCH  AND   MODERN   LIFE 

by  offering  them  ease  and  safety  and  comfort, 
but  rather  by  showing  them  how  tremendous 
are  the  tasks  before  them  ;  what  a  mighty  work 
there  is  to  do  in  delivering  this  world  from  the 
bondage  of  corruption  and  selfishness;  what 
hardship  and  toil  and  sacrifice  are  needed ; 
but  how  sure  the  victory  is  for  those  who 
are  able  to  believe  the  word  of  Jesus  Christ 
and  follow,  whole-heartedly,  his  leadership. 

Such  are  the  characters  and  conditions 
under  which  the  church  of  Jesus  Christ  pre- 
sents herself  in  this  new  day  to  modern  men. 
Her  record  is  far  from  flawless ;  it  is  the 
necessities  of  logic,  not  the  facts  of  history, 
which  make  her  infallible.  She  has  blundered 
along  through  the  centuries,  missing  much  of 
the  work  she  was  sent  to  do,  and  staining 
her  garments  not  seldom  with  the  soilure  of 
greed  and  the  blood  of  the  innocent;  but 
through  all  these  generations  the  patient  love 
of  her  Lord  has  been  chastening  her,  and 
through  many  wanderings  and  stumblings  she 
has  come  down  to  this  hour.  The  light  upon 
her  candlestick  has  often  grown  dim,  but  it 
has  never  been  wholly  extinguished ;  the  fire 
upon  her  altars  has  burned  low,  but  it  is  still 
burning.  She  has  not  done  all  that  she  ought 


THE   NEW   LEADERSHIP  203 

to  have  done,  but  she  has  done  a  large  part 
of  all  that  has  been  done  to  enlighten,  to  com- 
fort, and  to  uplift  humanity.  And  the  dis- 
cipline through  which  she  has  passed  gives 
some  indication  of  the  work  she  has  yet  to 
do.  It  is  not  credible  that  a  wise  Providence 
should  have  kept  her  alive  so  many  centuries, 
and  should  have  made  so  much  use  of  her  in 
the  establishment  upon  the  earth  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,  and  should  have  led  her  into 
a  constantly  increasing  knowledge  of  Himself, 
if  he  had  not  meant  to  make  her  his  servant 
in  the  great  work  now  waiting  to  be  done. 

Her  hour  has  come,  and  her  task  lies  before 
her.  It  might  be  urged  that  she  ought  to  have 
been  better  fitted  for  her  work  before  she  was 
called  to  undertake  it;  but  that  is  not  God's 
way.  We  get  our  preparation  for  great  work 
in  the  work  itself.  We  are  called  from  the 
sheepfolds  to  lead  the  armies  of  Israel.  We  are 
sent  out  with  a  few  loaves  and  fishes  to  feed 
the  multitude.  Our  powers  are  developed  and 
our  resources  are  multiplied  by  using  them. 
And  though  the  church  is  far  from  having  the 
equipment  she  needs  for  the  redemption  of 
society,  the  power  and  the  wisdom  will  come 
•when  the  work  is  bravely  undertaken. 


204    THE   CHURCH   AND   MODERN   LIFE 

To  whom,  now,  does  this  great  enterprise 
of  social  redemption  make  its  strongest  ap- 
peal? It  ought  to  appeal  to  all  good  men 
and  women.  It  ought  to  enlist  the  powers  of 
those  who  are  in  the  meridian  of  their  strength. 
The  men  whose  vision  has  been  widened  and 
whose  wills  have  been  invigorated  in  the  great 
undertakings  of  industry  and  commerce  ought 
to  find  in  this  proposition  something  worthy 
of  their  powers.  It  ought,  also,  to  stir  the 
hearts  of  those  who  have  labored  hard  and 
waited  long  for  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
to  hear  a  great  voice  saying,  "  Now  is  the 
accepted  time :  behold !  now  is  the  day  of  sal- 
vation !  "  To  many  of  those  who  have  not 
much  longer  to  live  life  never  seemed  a  thiug 
so  fair  as  it  is  to-day. 

But  this  great  appeal  ought  most  strongly 
to  lay  hold  upon  the  hearts  of  the  young  men 
and  women  of  this  generation.  The  enterprise 
is  mainly  theirs.  If  the  new  reformation 
comes,  they  will  lead  it  on.  If  society  is  re- 
deemed, it  will  be  by  their  toil  and  sacrifice. 
If  the  church  ever  learns  its  business,  it  will 
be  under  their  tuition.  And  it  must  be  by 
their  voices,  chiefly,  that  the  new  evangel  will 
be  proclaimed. 


THE   NEW    LEADERSHIP  205 

The  young  men  and  women  who  have  had 
the  patience  to  read  these  chapters  have  been 
invited  to  consider  some  large  and  serious 
themes.  It  has  been  assumed  that  they  did 
not  care  for  kindergarten  talk,  nor  even  for 
the  ethical  platitudes  to  which  youth  are  apt 
to  be  treated.  There  has  been  no  talking  down 
to  them ;  they  have  been  asked  to  sit  where 
Jesus  sat,  among  the  doctors  in  the  temple,  to 
hear  and  answer  questions,  and  to  consider, 
with  the  rest  of  us,  our  Father's  business. 

All  this  tremendous  work  of  social  recon- 
struction about  which  we  are  talking  must  be 
done,  and  most  of  it  must  be  done  by  them. 
It  is  to  be  hoped  that  they  will  be  able  to  see 
the  urgency  of  it,  and  to  feel  that  it  is  some- 
thing worth  their  while. 

Those  of  us  who  have  been  permitted  to 
come  in  contact  with  the  more  thoughtful 
young  men  and  women  of  this  generation, 
especially  those  in  the  colleges  and  the  pro- 
fessional schools,  have  been  made  aware  of  a 
deepening  conviction  among  the  best  of  them 
that  the  kind  of  prizes  for  which  the  multitude 
are  contending  are  not  of  the  highest  value. 
Great  revisions  have  been  taking  place,  during 
the  past  few  years,  in  the  estimates  of  success. 


206    THE   CHURCH  AND   MODERN  LIFE 

Many  careers  which,  but  a  little  -while  ago, 
seemed  enviable,  now  appear  much  less  allur- 
ing. And  while  this  change  of  attitude  is  far 
from  being  universal,  there  is  a  goodly  number 
of  young  men  and  women  scattered  through 
all  our  communities  whose  souls  are  kindled 
with  social  passion,  and  who  are  asking  not 
so  eagerly  how  they  may  succeed  as  how 
they  may  serve.  To  these  we  have  a  right  to 
look  for  leadership  in  the  work  of  social 
redemption. 

Many  phases  of  this  work  will  appeal  to 
them.  In  education,  in  philanthropy,  in  jour- 
nalism, in  literature,  in  art,  they  will  be  called 
to  serve ;  many  philanthropies  will  invite  them ; 
the  organization  of  industry  upon  cooperative 
lines  will  offer  some  of  them  a  vocation,  and 
the  government  will  be  upon  their  shoulders. 

But  what  they  are  asked  to  consider  here 
is  the  claim  of  the  church  upon  them.  That 
claim  need  not  conflict  with  any  of  these 
other  vocations,  unless,  indeed,  the  work  of 
the  Christian  ministry  should  offer  itself  to 
their  choice.  That  possibility,  by  the  way,  is 
well  worth  thinking  of.  Some  of  them,  let  us 
trust,  will  keep  it  in  mind  for  further  consid- 
eration. If  the  business  of  the  church  is  what 


THE  NEW    LEADERSHIP  207 

we  have  found  it  to  be,  and  the  new  evangel- 
ism is  such  as  we  have  outHned,  the  Christian 
ministry  must  offer  to  any  man  whose  heart 
is  on  fire  with  social  passion  a  great  oppor- 
tunity. But  for  the  present  let  us  note  the 
fact  that  upon  those  who  are  not  to  give  their 
whole  lives  to  the  work  of  the  church,  the 
church  has  a  claim,  which  they  ought  seri- 
ously to  consider.  Whatever  their  callings 
may  be,  in  whatever  fields  they  may  be  labor- 
ing, the  church  will  need  their  loyal  seriace, 
and  they  will  need  its  goodly  fellowships  and 
its  inspiring  cooperation. 

The  church  which  ought  to  be,  and  must 
be,  is  not  for  some  of  us,  but  for  all  of  us. 
Even  as  the  state  is  the  political  common- 
wealth to  which  all  citizens  belong,  so  the 
church  is  the  spiritual  commonwealth  in  which 
all  souls  should  be  included.  The  interests  for 
which  the  church  provides  are  the  common  hu- 
man interests ;  it  never  can  be  what  it  ought 
to  be,  or  do  what  it  is  called  to  do,  until  it 
gathers  all  the  people  into  its  fellowship.  And 
therefore  these  young  men  and  women  to 
whom  the  future  is  intrusted  must  find  their 
places  in  the  church.  The  church  needs  them; 
it  cannot  fulfill  its  function  without  them ;  and 


208     THE   CHURCH   AND  MODERN   LIFE 

we  have  seen  that  its  function  is  a  vital  func- 
tion; that  it  furnishes  the  bond  by  which 
society  is  held  together. 

The  church  is  God's  agency  for  leavening 
society  with  Christian  influences;  and  these 
young  men  and  women  by  whom  the  social 
order  is  to  be  reconstructed  will  be  in  the 
church.  Its  leadership  will  be  committed  to 
them.  They  will  have  the  shaping  of  its  life. 
Its  life  will  need  much  reshaping,  and  that 
will  be  their  work.  What  will  they  make  of 
it? 

1.  They  will  make  it,  what  it  has  always 
been,  a  place  of  worship ;  the  shrine  of  the 
spirit;  the  home  of  Christian  nurture;  a 
school  of  instruction  ;  a  fount  of  inspiration ; 
a  seminary  of  religion ;  the  meeting-place  of 
man  and  God. 

Attempts  have  been  made  in  recent  years 
to  organize  churches  —  or,  at  least,  associa- 
tions which  should  take  the  place  of  churches 
—  in  which  religion  should  be  dispensed  with ; 
in  which  there  should  be  more  or  less  of  ethi- 
cal instruction  and  of  charitable  cooperation, 
but  no  recognition  of  any  connection  between 
this  world  and  any  other.  That  is  simply  a 
reform  against  nature,  and  it  will  never  pros- 


THE   NEW    LEADERSHIP  209 

per.  For,  as  Professor  William  James  has 
taught  us,  in  a  great  inductive  study,  the  sum 
of  all  that  is  known  about  religion  warrants 
us  in  saying  :  — 

"(«)  That  the  visible  world  is  part  of  a 
more  spiritual  universe,  from  which  it  draws 
its  chief  significance ; 

"  (6)  That  union  or  harmonious  relation 
"with  that  higher  universe  is  our  true  end; 

"  (c)  That  prayer  or  inner  communion  with 
the  spirit  thereof  ...  is  a  process  wherein 
work  is  really  done,  and  spiritual  energy  flows 
in  and  produces  effects,  psychological  or  ma- 
terial, within  the  phenomenal  world."  ^ 

These  are  the  indubitable  conclusions  of 
modern  science ;  and  the  proposition  to  ignore 
the  deepest  fact  of  human  experience  will  not 
be  entertained  by  the  young  men  and  women 
of  the  present  day.  The  church,  under  their 
leadership,  will  be  a  worshiping  church,  a  pray- 
ing church.  It  will  keep  itself  in  close  relations 
with  that  unseen  universe  from  which  its  help 
must  come.  It  will  be  a  channel  through  which 
the  divine  grace  will  flow  into  the  lives  of  men. 
And  it  will  also  be,  what  it  has  always  been, 
a  school  as  well  as  a  shrine,  a  place  where  the 

^  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  485. 


210     THE   CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

teacher  searches  out  and  unfolds  the  truth 
and  the  prophet  proclaims  the  message  that 
has  been  given  him. 

2.  Under  its  new  leadership  the  church 
will  continue  to  be  a  minister  to  human  want 
and  suffering.  The  charitable  work  which  has 
always  been  emphasized  in  its  administration 
will  not  be  neglected,  but  it  will  take  on  a 
new  character.  There  will  be  less  almsgiving, 
and  more  of  the  kind  of  help  which  saves 
manhood  and  womanhood.  The  young  men 
and  women  who  are  called  to  this  leadership 
will  understand  the  worth  of  souls  —  that  is, 
of  men  and  women ;  and  they  will  be  careful 
lest,  in  their  relief  of  want,  they  undermine 
the  character.  Above  all,  they  will  feel  that 
while  it  is  the  business  of  the  church  to  care 
for  the  poor,  its  first  business  is  to  cure  the 
conditions  which  breed  poverty. 

3.  They  will  thoroughly  democratize  the  life 
of  the  church,  making  it  the  rallying  place  of 
a  genuine  Christian  fraternity,  in  which  men 
of  all  ranks  and  stations  meet  on  a  common 
level,  ignoring  the  distinctions  of  rich  and 
poor,  cultured  and  ignorant,  and  emphasizing 
the  fact  of  Christian  brotherhood.  We  have 
churches  which  profess  democracy,  but  there 


THE  NEW   LEADERSHIP  211 

is  reason  to  fear  that  many  of  them  are  httle 
better  than  oli^i^archies  ;  that  some  of  them 
come  near  to  being  monarchies.  The  new  lead- 
ership will  discern  the  importance  of  making 
every  member  of  the  brotherhood,  no  matter 
how  humble,  a  partaker  of  its  responsibilities, 
and  a  helper  in  its  services.  They  will  know 
that  the  problem  of  church  administration  is 
to  make  every  man  feel  that  he  is  needed. 
They  will  grasp  the  significance  of  Paul's 
figure  of  the  body  and  its  members,  and  will 
see  that  "  those  members  of  the  body  which 
seem  to  be  more  feeble  are  necessary,"  and 
that  "  those  parts  of  the  body  which  are  less 
honorable  "  ought  to  receive  "  more  abundant 
honor."  They  will  have  workingmen  in  their 
vestries  and  their  sessions  and  their  boards  of 
trustees.  They  will  show  to  all  the  world  that 
they  have  accepted  the  word  of  Jesus  :  "  One 
is  your  Master,  even  Christ,  and  all  ye  are 
brethren." 

4.  This  means  that  the  life  of  the  church 
will  not  only  be  thoroughly  democratized,  but 
greatly  simplified.  All  its  administration  will 
take  on  plainer  and  less  luxurious  forms.  The 
splendors  of  architecture  and  art,  of  uphol- 
stery and  decoration,  of  ecclesiastical  millinery 


212    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN   LIFE 

and  music,  with  which  we  now  so  often  seek  to 
attract  men  to  the  house  of  God,  will  be  put 
aside ;  and  the  followers  of  Jesus  Christ  will 
get  near  enough  to  him  to  have  some  sense 
of  the  fitness  of  things  in  the  ordering  of  the 
houses  of  worship  where  the  Carpenter  is  the 
social  leader  and  where  rich  and  poor  meet 
as  one  brotherhood. 

Instead,  therefore,  of  permitting  the  church 
to  be  invaded  and  vulgarized  by  the  luxury 
and  extravagance  of  the  world,  they  will  turn 
the  current  in  the  other  direction.  The  church, 
under  the  new  leadership,  will  not  take  its  cue 
from  the  world ;  it  will  enforce  its  own  stand- 
ards upon  the  world.  "  Out  of  Zion  will  go 
forth  the  law." 

Bitter  words  were  those  spoken  at  a  recent 
meeting  of  the  Congregational  Union  in  Eng- 
land by  one  of  the  greatest  of  English  preach- 
ers.^ "The  common  life  of  the  home,"  he  said, 
"  is  often  a  mere  vulgar  exhibition  of  the  means 
of  living.  We  try  to  persuade  ourselves  that 
showy  living  is  essential  life.  In  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  English  homes  the  mere  show  of  things 
is  the  goal  of  a  restless  and  feverish  ambi- 
tion.   Everywhere  we   seem  to  be   loitering 

'  Dr.  J.  H.  Jowett. 


THE  NEW   LEADERSHIP  213 

and  pottering  about  in  the  implement  yard. 
Even  in  our  universities  we  must  have  showy 
buildings,  though  we  starve  the  chairs.  All 
this  peril  becomes  the  more  insidious  when  we 
pass  into  the  realm  of  the  church  of  God. 
Why,  the  ^  means  of  grace  '  are  often  misinter- 
preted as  grace  itself.  We  are  obtruding  our 
badges  and  ribbons,  our  soldier's  dress  with- 
out the  soldier's  spirit,  our  music,  our  ministers 
even,  —  how  they  look,  what  they  wear,  what 
they  do  —  they  are  all  part  of  the  wretched 
vulgarity  of  the  modern  spirit." 

The  two  things  are  rightly  put  together. 
The  ostentation  of  the  home,  the  tawdry  luxury 
and  profusion  of  fashionable  society,  creep  into 
the  church  and  set  up  their  standards  there, 
and  the  religion  of  Christ  puts  on  a  costume  in 
which  its  Founder  would  never  recognize  it. 

We  are  dealing  here  with  the  very  heart  of 
the  trouble  in  our  national  life,  and  the  prob- 
lem is  one  which  must  be  solved  by  the  pre- 
sent generation  of  our  young  men  and  women. 
The  social  conditions  which  are  depicted  for 
us  by  close  students  of  the  life  of  our  luxurious 
classes  are  ominous  in  the  extreme.  The  cyn- 
ical dishonesties  and  the  brutal  spoliations 
which  have  come  to  light  in  the  realm  of  high 


214    THE  CHURCH  AND  MODERN  LIFE 

finance  and  big  business  are  the  natural  fruit 
of  such  a  manner  of  life  as  many  of  our  recent 
novelists  have  vividly  portrayed.  And  the 
wanton  extravagance  of  the  House  of  Mirth 
would  not  exist  if  the  majority  of  the  people 
did  not  admire  it.  The  outcry  against  it  is 
oftener  the  voice  of  envy  than  of  moral  re- 
vulsion. The  cure  for  this  evil,  as  of  most 
others,  is  found  in  public  opinion ;  and  the 
church  must  educate  public  opinion  to  reprove 
it,  and  the  leadership  of  the  church  will  be 
in  the  hands  of  the  young  men  and  women  of 
this  generation. 

It  will  be  evident  to  them  that  the  place  to 
begin  is  in  the  church  itself.  The  heartless 
luxury  of  the  world  will  not  be  chastened  into 
simplicity  by  a  church  that  surrounds  itself 
with  splendor  and  spends  money  lavishly  upon 
its  pleasures.  They  will  know  that  a  church 
which  wishes  to  reprove  the  vanity  and  osten- 
tation of  the  outside  world  must  order  its  own 
life  in  such  a  way  that  its  word  shall  be  with 
power. 

5.  Finally  and  chiefly  the  young  men  and 
women  who  are  to  be  called  to  the  leadership 
of  the  church  will  feel  that  their  main  business 
is  the  work  of  church  extension.  But  they  will 


THE  NEW   LEADERSHIP  215 

give  to  this  phrase  a  little  different  meaDing 
from  that  which  it  has  generally  carried.  The 
church  extension  to  which  the  boards  and 
societies  in  the  church  have  been  devoted  is 
the  work  of  building  new  churches  in  promis- 
ing fields.  It  is  properly  denominational  ex- 
tension. Something  of  this  kind  will  remain 
to  be  done  in  the  new  day  now  before  us,  and 
our  new  leaders  will  doubtless  have  some  part 
in  it.  But  the  church  extension  which  is  most 
loudly  called  for  just  now  is  the  extension  of 
the  life  of  the  church  into  every  department 
of  human  life.  It  is  more  analogous  to  what 
we  call  university  extension  work.  The  busi- 
ness of  university  extension  is  not  the  plant- 
ing of  new  universities  ;  it  is  the  projection  of 
the  university  into  the  community ;  it  is  the 
attempt  to  carry  the  light  and  the  knowledge 
and  the  truth  and  the  beauty  for  which  the 
university  stands  down  among  the  people  ;  to 
popularize  the  higher  culture  and  the  finer 
art.  That  is  a  most  praiseworthy  enterprise,  a 
most  Christian  undertaking^.  And  something 
very  much  like  this  will  be  the  church  exten- 
sion for  which  the  new  leadership  will  stand. 
Its  aim  will  be  to  make  a  vital  connection  be- 
tween the  Christian  church  and  every  institu- 


216    THE  CHURCH   AND   MODERN  LIFE 

tion  or  agency  by  which  the  work  of  the  world 
is  done,  so  that  the  influence  of  the  church 
shall  be  directly  felt  in  every  part  of  our 
social  life.  It  will  consider  the  church  as  the 
nursery  or  conservatory,  whose  growths  are  to 
be  planted  out  all  over  the  field  of  the  world. 
It  will  make  the  church  the  central  dynamo  of 
the  community,  connected  by  a  live  Avire  with 
every  home,  school,  factory,  bank,  shop,  store, 
office,  legislative  chamber,  employers'  associa- 
tion, labor  federation,  —  with  every  organ  of 
the  whole  social  organism,  so  that  the  light 
and  power  which  are  in  Jesus  Christ  shall  be 
the  guiding  influence  and  the  motive  force  of 
our  civilization. 

This  is  the  work  which  remains  to  be  done, 
and  for  which  this  present  world  is  loudly 
calling.  It  is  the  work  that  Jesus  Christ  came 
into  this  world  to  do,  and  he  will  not  see  of 
the  travail  of  his  soul  and  be  satisfied  until  it 
is  done.  The  opportunity  of  realizing  the  so- 
cial aims  of  Jesus,  of  organizing  society  upon 
the  principles  which  he  laid  down,  is  offered 
to  the  young  men  and  women  of  this  genera- 
tion. It  will  be  open  to  them  so  to  order  the 
life  of  the  church  that  in  its  democracy  and 
its  simplicity  it  shall  represent  Jesus  Christ, 


THE  NEW   LEADERSHIP  217 

and  then  to  extend  this  life  into  industry  and 
commerce  and  politics  and  art  and  social  di- 
version, thusbrinoinof  all  the  king-doms  of  this 
world  into  the  kingdom  of  the  Christ.  It  will 
be  their  principal  task  to  translate  the  sermons 
and  the  prayers  and  the  songs  of  Sunday  into 
the  life  of  the  shop  and  the  factory  and  the 
office  on  Monday  and  the  other  days  of  the 
week.  That  would  mean,  of  course,  a  tremen- 
dous overturning  in  the  business  of  the  world  ; 
a  radical  revision  of  the  ideals  and  standards 
of  the  great  majority;  a  new  point  of  view 
and  a  new  aim  in  life  for  the  most  of  us.  But 
such  a  peaceful  revolution  in  our  ways  of  life 
would  be  far  less  painful  and  disastrous  than 
the  revolution  which  our  present  habits  are 
sure  to  bring,  and  it  is  the  only  thing  which 
will  prevent  it.  And  if  the  young  men  and 
women  of  to-day  will  but  discern  this  truth, 
they  may  have  the  honor  of  leading  in  the 
new  Saturnian  reign. 

We  hear  in  these  days  from  earnest  men 
many  anxious  questions  why  the  message  of 
the  gospel  fails  to  reach  and  convince  the 
outside  multitude.  "  Why  is  it,"  good  preach- 
ers say,  "  that  there  are  so  many  people  in  all 
our  communities  —  some  of  them  very  good 


218    THE   CHURCH   AND  MODERN   LIFE 

people  —  who  are  not  at  all  touched  by  our 
appeal?  They  do  not  seem  to  be  interested 
in  what  we  have  to  offer  them.  They  do  not 
appear  to  feel  their  need  of  it." 

To  this  question  more  than  one  answer 
could  be  given,  but  there  is  one  answer  which 
needs  to  be  well  considered.  One  reason  is 
that  these  men  and  women  fail  to  discern,  in 
the  life  round  about  them,  the  reality  of  the 
thing  which  we  offer  them.  For  Christian- 
ity is,  as  we  have  seen  in  these  studies,  not 
only  an  individual  experience,  but  a  social 
fact.  And  while  we  might  not  be  qualified  to 
judge  whether  the  individual  experience,  in 
any  given  case,  is  genuine,  we  could  see  the 
social  fact,  if  it  were  in  sight.  That  social  fact 
would  be  profoundly  interesting  to  us,  and  it 
would  be  convincing.  Nothing  else  is  hkely  to 
convince  us.  In  truth,  we  cannot  understand 
Christianity  at  all  until  we  see  it  in  operation 
in  society.  One  man  alone  cannot  give  any  idea 
of  what  it  is.  As  some  one  has  said,  one  man 
and  God  will  give  us  all  that  is  essential  in 
any  other  religion,  but  Christianity  requires 
for  its  operation  at  least  two  men  and  God. 
In  fact,  it  takes  a  good  many  men  and  women 
and  children,  living  together  in  all  sorts  of  re- 


THE  NEW  LEADERSHIP  219 

lations,  to  give  any  adequate  exhibition  o£  it. 
What  we  need,  then,  first  of  all,  to  convince 
men  of  its  reality,  is  a  good  sample  of  it,  in 
active  operation  —  a  great  variety  of  good 
samples,  indeed.  When  we  have  these  to  show, 
we  can  get  people  interested. 

It  would  be  difficult,  if  a  very  homely  illus- 
tration may  be  permitted,  to  enlist  the  interest 
of  any  boy  in  baseball  if  you  made  it  with 
him  an  individual  matter.  You  might  try  to 
train  him  for  any  given  position  on  the  field, 
but  if  he  undertook  to  study  it  out  alone  it 
would  not  be  easy  for  him  to  understand  it. 
In  fact,  it  would  be  impossible.  No  one  could 
learn  the  game  all  alone.  The  team  work  is 
the  whole  of  it.  And  it  would  be  absurd  to 
expect  any  one  to  become  interested  in  the 
game  unless  he  could  see  it  played. 

To  take  a  similar  illustration  from  a  some- 
what higher  form  of  art,  you  would  not  be 
likely  to  succeed  in  awakening  enthusiasm  in 
any  one  for  orchestral  music  by  giving  him 
his  individual  part  of  the  score  to  study  and 
play  over  by  himself.  No  matter  what  his  in- 
strument might  be,  the  solitary  performance 
of  the  part  assigned  to  it  would  be  the  dryest 
possible  business.  You  could  not  convert  any 


220    THE   CHURCH  AND   MODERN   LIFE 

man  to  the  love  of  orchestral  music  by  any 
such  process.  But  i£  he  could  hear  all  the  in- 
struments played  together,  and,  better  still,  if 
he  could  play  in  with  all  the  rest,  that  might 
be  inspiring. 

So  you  need  not  expect  to  convert  any  man 
to  Christianity  unless  you  can  show  him  Christ- 
ianity at  work  in  human  society.  In  consider- 
ing only  the  individual  application  of  it,  its 
whole  meaning  and  significance  would  be  hid- 
den from  him.  The  team  work  is  all  there  is 
of  it.  Let  him  see  it  in  active  operation,  and  it 
will  awaken  his  enthusiasm. 

This  is,  in  fact,  the  essence  of  the  new  evan- 
gelism to  which  the  young  men  and  women  of 
this  day  are  called.  Their  business  will  be  to 
take  Christianity  out  into  the  field  of  the 
world  and  set  it  at  work.  It  is  for  this  that 
the  leadership  is  intrusted  to  them.  The  church 
has  been  a  long  time  coming  to  this,  but  it 
seems  at  last  to  be  arriving,  and  the  young 
people  of  this  generation  will  be  summoned 
to  the  great  undertaking.  Surely  they  may 
feel  that  a  high  honor  and  a  heavy  respons- 
ibility are  thus  put  upon  them.  It  is  the  most 
heroic  enterprise  to  which  the  sons  of  men 
have  ever  been  called. 


THE  NEW   LEADERSHIP  221 

Not  all  of  them  will  respond  to  the  call. 
But  we  may  hope  that  there  will  be  found 
among  them  a  goodly  minority  to  whom  the 
appeal  will  come  with  commanding  voice,  and 
whom  we  may  hear  answering:  "Yea  and 
amen  !  The  work  is  ours,  and  we  will  not 
shirk  it.  It  is  work  worth  doing,  and  it  can  be 
done.  To  make  a  better  world  of  this  is  the 
best  thing  a  man  can  think  of ;  and  we  be- 
lieve that  Christ's  way  is  the  right  way.  It 
has  never  yet  had  a  fair  trial,  and  we  are 
bound  that  it  shall  be  tried.  We  know  that 
we  shall  not  make  ourselves  rich  or  famous  in 
this  undertaking ;  but  we  shall  see  the  load 
lifted  from  many  shoulders,  and  the  light  of 
hope  shining  in  many  eyes;  we  shall  hear  the 
din  of  strife  changing  to  the  songs  of  cheer- 
ful labor  ;  we  shall  share  our  simple  joys  with 
those  who  know  that  we  have  always  tried  to 
make  their  lives  happier,  and  who  cannot 
choose  but  love  us ;  we  shall  find  life  worth 
living,  and  we  shall  die  content." 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .   A 


Date  Due 


P   20  Si 


##*WW 


^^^^ 


Wr  2  0  '4. 


l^.) 


'^^■Hii  1  n  iUm 


F£4-'49 


^Ly^^^iem 


}ji7rr-n""'^'5*^' 


PifflUUtt 


